


Funerary Rites

by roseveare



Series: Transformations [4]
Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, M/M, Multi, Post-Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-12-08
Packaged: 2018-04-29 07:30:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 41,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5120129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseveare/pseuds/roseveare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The dead are walking in Haven again, variously a hindrance and a help. But the ghost in Audrey's head is called <i>Mara</i> and is steeped in ill intent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> My Halloween fic, which is going to be mostly late. 
> 
> The other stories that are linked with this can stand alone and only share minor references. This one, however, is somewhat more dependant on what has come before.
> 
> Ray and Lily McBreen, Mr Sperry and William, all appeared in the season 1 episode _Harmony_ with the music Trouble.

**PROLOGUE**

Nathan found himself unable to sleep. Too many churning uncertainties pulling at his thoughts, though Audrey and Duke were snoring softly, folded into each others' arms on the other side of the bed. The same worries -- mostly the same -- plagued them, since that day on the hillside when the Barn had not come.

They often slept curled together while Nathan, for whom Audrey's touch provided the opposite of restfulness, disentangled after a while to rearrange himself apart. Tonight it meant he didn't have to wake them as he quietly rose from the bed and grabbed up the clothes he'd worn the day before, taking them almost to the threshold of the door before he pulled them on, fumbling through his lack of sensory input in the moonlight. He left the upstairs apartment of the _Gull_ in total darkness.

All the heartache and planning, all their fears... They'd gone that day expecting a fight, desperate to somehow prevent Audrey from being torn away from them, and the Barn had not come. The weeks stretched, since then, a kind of limbo. There had been no sign of any change in the situation. By now, everyone had stopped expecting that the Barn _might yet_ come.

Nathan took the grit road down the shoreline on foot. His boots crunched with each step and the noise hit the air dully, seeming muffled in the pre-dawn greyness of the world. When the terrain allowed, he cut across the grassy edges of the land and down to the long bay north of the _Gull_. The tide was a long way out, the waves hushed like his footsteps; like the sea was holding its breath.

The Troubles hadn't left. The Guard were enraged, the Reverend Driscoll's old crowd were riled up, and even the general population was restless, cued-in on an instinctive level to that undercurrent that something had happened, that it was _bad_ , and things weren't the same anymore.

Nathan walked along the foreshore in the dead-quiet of pre-dawn, kicking at the wrack left behind at the head of the tide, inhaling the scent and taste of the salt and the rotting seaweed and stranded carcasses of sea creatures.

He knew why Audrey thought the Barn had not come: its human component was _broken_. They had intended to prevent her from being the price of stopping the Troubles, but now that it had happened in spite of them, the thought that she _could not_ help was making her bitter. The day after tomorrow -- day after today -- he was hoping they'd be able to establish once and for all that this _wasn't her fault_.

Even if it _was_ down to the head injury she'd received, it wasn't her fault.

Nathan couldn't help but be glad that the danger of losing her was past them, even considering the price tag. He wasn't sure what that made him, but had determined, since they couldn't change it either way, that he wasn't going to examine too hard. Maybe it just made him _lucky_.

Now, though, Haven needed a strategy for dealing with the Troubles long-term as it never had before. That was just one of the many things that kept him awake; that was making it increasingly hard for him to continue in his role as Chief of Police.

He had time enough before Audrey and Duke would be starting to rise, and his own disquiet pushed him to keep moving. He couldn't feel the burn of his limbs from the exercise or the bite of the winds, surely chilling now as they headed toward winter, but if he walked far and fast enough he'd start to feel the light-headedness and euphoria of the exercise after _some_ fashion. The _Gull_ was out of sight before long and he realised he was nearing the rocky, sandy expanses of the shore where Garland Wuornos had died.

Subconsciously, he supposed he'd avoided that part of the coast ever since. Now, with the Haven his father had left to his care barely clinging on and tensions ready to drag the town apart at the seams, was surely as good a time as any to revisit. A grim thought stilled Nathan's feet as he rounded the concrete flat of the parking lot that intruded the wild coast, and beheld that stretch of bay again. Pieces of the Chief had been strewn across the sand, some fine like dust. It could never be possible for Dave and Vince Teagues to lift it all from the site where Garland had fallen. Mixed with the sand and pebbles on this beach, constantly moved by the tide, were still rock fragments that had been Nathan's adopted father. He breathed in thinking uneasily of dust on the wind. Surely, though, he thought, this was as good a resting place as that vale where he'd buried the cooler, or where Vince and Dave had moved Garland later. He struck out across the rocks, avoiding the ugliness of the crumbling lot. Eternity here was surely as good as or better than a cooler _or_ a respectable grave. Though Garland had, anyway, preferred the woods.

Garland wasn't lingering in any case. Nathan had had confirmation of that when the horror Trouble struck town and he'd had opportunity to speak to some genuine ghosts. There was no spectre of his father to talk with here, explain the unfathomable disintegration of Haven's centuries-long cycle on that island slope... No Garland to ask if he was still the man to take Haven forward, now the rules had changed.

Nathan wasn't sure he'd been the man for the job before. It still enraged him that Haven notables of years gone by had perpetuated the sacrifice of Audrey's past selves. All the secrets and the secret-keepers were coming out of the woodwork now, approaching him, as what they'd known ceased to hold meaning. The Guard had a damned bunker full of information.

Angular dark shapes struck up from the profile of the beach ahead, over toward the tideline and the lapping waves, jagged and jutting. Nathan squinted and slowed his pace. There'd been some storms recently, but there were no craft left missing and unaccounted for. Probably it was some unfortunate lobster-man's wrecked lobster pots. Not thinking too much of it, but heading much that way anyway, Nathan amended his course slightly, watching his feet in the gathering light -- the smallest crack of yellow showed on the base of the horizon now -- as he picked through the uneven sand, seaweed and pebbles.

Just because Nathan hadn't ultimately been faced with that choice of allowing Audrey to be sent away, _sacrificed_ , against their own freedom from the Troubles, that didn't mean there weren't people in town who judged he'd somehow already made it. _Somehow_ he'd disabled the engine that took the Troubles away to save Audrey. They all knew, after all, what she was to him.

Increasingly, they also knew about _Duke_ , and that was getting to be a problem. Nathan had never expected himself to be a focus for scandal. Duke alone would've been alright: raised a few eyebrows, sure, but his genetics were a greater problem than his sex. In the same way, Audrey's role was the problem with his association with her, though perhaps not an insurmountable one on its own.

But the town wasn't ready in _any_ sense to accept his relationship with both Duke and Audrey. He was starting to feel the pinch of growing disapproval in the new climate and wasn't sure he'd hang onto his position much longer. Losing that would lose him much of his influence to _protect_ Duke and Audrey if worst came to worst. Being disgraced wasn't anything he couldn't live with, but _that_ could hurt them.

The shapes in front of him, Nathan realised with an unpleasant psychosomatic twist in his stomach, looked increasingly less like the wreckage of lobster pots. On the night air, just for a moment, he suddenly thought he heard faint, faltering music. Then, thready through the breeze and the distance, he thought he heard a woman's voice call out for help.

Nathan shivered, even though he couldn't feel the cold. There were legends up the coastline about female beings who preyed upon sailors, drawing them to crash on the rocks. This was a safe bay with few rocks, adequate for a landing when the tide was right, but in Haven he _wouldn't_ discount the possibility of sirens out on the waters.

He stopped still and examined himself for any abnormal desire to be drawn toward that noise.

"People in trouble," a gruff voice came from behind him, raw with emotions _other_ than the implied criticism in a fashion Nathan had seldom heard it in life. "Should go help, 'stead of loitering with your thumb up your ass."

Nathan's breath was caught in his throat. His head swam. The world was still dingy and grey, without really the visibility to tell if his vision blurred, but he was still sure the shapes in the semi-darkness wavered a moment. Not-- it _couldn't_ be. Not here on this beach...

He turned stiffly, jaw already working. The man at his back was rounding him, too, so they met before Nathan anticipated. He knew who he'd expected, but was unsure _what_. This... didn't look like a ghost. Nathan reached out for the other man, grabbed him by both shoulders, and there was _weight_ there, _solidity_ , clothing that crinkled under the pressure of his fingers. " _Dad_?"

"Son." He found himself yanked into Garland Wuornos' gruff embrace, which was hard enough that even Nathan's body recognised it, registering the weighty thumps of blunt hands upon his back from the way they made his whole balance sway.

He probably shouldn't even ask _how_ , after everything that he had seen. It wasn't the first time the dead had walked in Haven. It wasn't even the first time his father had, though he hadn't been solid and real like this. It _was_ a Trouble, though. Of that, he could be certain.

Garland pulled back just as swiftly and gruffly. "I mean it, Nathan. Something wrong up ahead. _I'm_ here, for starters."

Hard to argue with that. "Alright," Nathan choke out. "You. You're--" His hand was still gripping his father's sleeve, unwilling to let go. They took several steps across the beach debris before he finally had to make himself let go for the sake of his balance.

"Not gonna vanish right now," Garland said. "Well. Pretty sure. You got your sidearm?"

As it happened, Nathan was untrusting enough of the current state of affairs that he'd buckled his gun belt on automatically even for the early morning stroll. He unclipped it now, while Garland's shadow patted empty flanks and grumbled. Nathan wished the sun would hurry up and rise, let him see the spectre better and judge how real this Garland Wuornos was. It would make walking easier, too. Considering the limitations of his own Trouble, it had been arguably foolish not to bring a flashlight.

"Do you remember...?" he begun, then faltered.

"Dying? At least the location was nice; decent fishing spot. And of the folks left in this town I give a damn about, I was attended by the best."

It hadn't actually been what Nathan was going to ask, since it struck him as oddly insensitive. Nathan gave it a moment, then tried again, "Do you remember coming back before? Kyle Hopkins' Trouble? With Simon Crocker and the Rev?"

Garland grunted and gave a tight nod. "A mess. You know, it's difficult to find the right words, right fashion to deal with a situation, when you're pulled up from wherever you were all abrupt like that."

"...You mean you've... been thinking _better_ of what you said since then?"

"Must have. Don't remember. Maybe that's just the way things are. Can't carry anything back..." Garland's feet stumbled over the ground like real living feet as he sped up suddenly. "Whoa! Hey, Nathan, now, over here..."

Nathan picked out white, pale skin and bundled clothing around the shape of a human body even as Garland fell to his knees beside it. Garland's hands were on the person's neck, feeling for warmth, taking a pulse, patting at the skin when he presumably found it. Nathan caught up and dropped beside him, reaching...

He saw the man's face in the dim light and stopped.

"Hey, hey there. You alive in there?" Garland's voice rose between sharp slaps. Nathan caught his hand before he could land another.

"Don't. I know who he is. Think this is all the reaction you get." Howard Sperry had been unable to move or communicate without Troubled assistance.

But Nathan had heard _music_ just now...

He jerked back. The associated memory that rose up was unpleasant. But he'd _done_ the madness, and the madness hadn't felt like this. He turned and stared at Garland... Hallucinations, now? Had the madness taken another form? But, _no_ , last time everyone who'd been hit had been hit hard with crazy _rage_ , it didn't vary. Unless Ray's Trouble had mutated...

Ray! Ray McBreen and _Lily_. He remembered the woman's voice he'd heard through the darkness, and whatever altered state his mind was in that he might not be able to fully register or understand, it still seemed that if they were here then they needed help.

He stood, leaving Garland to crouch puzzled over the unmoving man, frowning back up at him. " _Lily_!" Nathan shouted. " _Ray_!"

"Oh, thank goodness!" The woman's voice came thinly out of the dark further along the shore. "Please, _please_ help me. He's hurt..."

"We're on our way!"

"You know what this is?" Garland asked, patting Sperry's face again before starting to winch himself up. "We'll be back, son. You hang in there."

Nathan spared a brief look back, resisting the temptation to let his eyes get caught on his father's apparition. "Yeah. I think I know what this is. Some of this." He'd known at the time that this happy ending was strictly temporary.

_It didn't have to be. Troubles didn't go away, but I heard Ray's playing and I'm not mad... or not mad like before... Sperry is still catatonic, but Lily seems together... Or could be that's the crisis showing. People do things in moments of need that normally they can't..._

He stumbled onward over rocks. The shapes he'd seen from afar resolved into ruined fragments of the motorboat, the biggest lying broken but with the basic frame intact. He could see Ray and Lily in silhouette, and he'd heard them both, after a fashion. His search abruptly switched to looking around for the fourth member of this crew. "Where's William?" he asked urgently. The younger man had been in the same state as Sperry...

"He left us in Hawaii," Lily said. "Found a local cure. It didn't work on Howard."

Nathan breathed out in relief and went to the Troubled couple. Ray seemed semi-conscious. Nathan let Garland slide in to examine him and take his pulse. "Skin's hot as hell, hard to tell if that's clammy or sea damp, but I'm guessing fever," Garland said. "He was sick before the crash?"

Lily said, "He's been sick for days. We had to come inland to... to get help. We needed to anyway, for Howard. Ray's Trouble... doesn't work on him anymore."

"It didn't work on me just now, either," Nathan said.

"...No..." Lily raised her head and looked between them both slowly. "You. You're Detective Wuornos. You were--" Her voice turned a little uncomfortable -- remembering last time, Nathan judged. 

"He's Chief Wuornos, now," Garland corrected gruffly.

"And you're...?" Lily said.

"Chief Wuornos," Garland bit off, even more gruffly.

"Oh." Nathan could _hear_ her perplexed frown.

"This is my father," Nathan said, trying not to sound quite _as_ gruff, although he was by no means certain of his success. "It's probably a long story."

"'C'mon, get off him." Garland teased for Lily's cooperation, pulling at Ray. "Nathan, you give me a hand here, we'll get him away from of the wreck, up the sand clear of the tide. Guessing since you didn't pull it out already you don't got your phone with you." Nathan had been uncomfortably increasingly aware of that oversight. "We gotta... get these three up to shelter between us, then you run back up the coast to fetch help from the _Gull_. Break in if you have to, this time of night. We need their phones."

"I don't have to break in," Nathan said. "Audrey lives above the _Gull_ now."

"Well, good. You can move on your own okay, can't you, girl?" Garland asked Lily.

"I'm not hurt," she said. "We need to take care of _Ray_." Her hand curled over a small set of wooden pipes on Ray's chest, inches from his unconscious fingers.

"We will," Nathan promised. He grasped Ray's shoulders as Garland took his legs. Even with Lily spotting the terrain for them, it was treacherous going to move him up the beach, and coming back for Sperry was even harder. Garland was panting and shaking like a real live old man by the time they were putting Sperry down, safe at the base of the slight slope off from the remote parking lot, where the sand was soft and grassy, where the edge of the concrete shaded out the winds.

"Best you get going," Garland heaved. "Bring some proper help for them. Beyond me what's the matter with this fellow, but it don't look good."

"Lucassi knows him of old," Nathan said automatically, and amended, "That's our M.E. now. Sorry." He hesitated, not wanting to pull himself away. "You..."

"I sure as hell ain't doing the running part." Garland flapped a hand up from where he leaned bent over his knees, still recovering his breath, and waved Nathan off. 

Nathan was afraid he wasn't going to _be_ there anymore by the time he got back. Whatever had brought him here tonight, they didn't know what that _was_ yet, and if he might be gone... " _Dad_." Nathan reached out his hand, grasped his adoptive father's. Ridiculous gesture. He almost froze up. Couldn't _do_ , couldn't _think_ anything else. Words wouldn't come.

"You daft sod," Garland grumped, shaking his head and waving him off again. "I'm still going to be here when you get back."

But he wasn't.

Nathan returned along the coast road with the Bronco a little over an hour later. The ambulance crew he'd called from the _Gull_ had beat him to it, passing him on the route.

Lily wasn't there. Garland wasn't there. The only thing left were the two abandoned bodies of the sick men, and yet another Haven mystery.


	2. PART 1

**PART 1**

"I swear he was there," Nathan said. "My father was _there_ , he helped me carry the injured out of the reach of the tide."

"And Lily vanished, too?" Audrey asked, frowning into her breakfast. She had headache again today. She'd had strange dreams again last night -- lurid, blood-soaked, _miserable_ , middle-of-a-serial-killer-case type dreams, even though they weren't in the middle of any cases like that right now. But she remembered the sort of dreams that had given her, or at least, given the Audrey Parker of her fake FBI memories.

Though these weren't quite the same. She'd used to dream about the victims and the killers, acting out their gory pantomime over and over; and sometimes herself there in the middle, trying to prevent what she knew in some heavy core of her heart had already taken place, trying in vain to _save._ In _these_ dreams, more often than not, _she_ wasthe one doing terrible things. She had little memory of them when the morning came, but she had one clear image that had stayed with her for days: how she'd laid her hands on one man and watched his body fly apart, while a handprint like illuminated tar somehow _glowed_ in the wake of her touch, for the split second before he became shreds of flesh.

Last night, she had been both victim and perpetrator. She couldn't remember the details now, only that someone was hunting her, _hurting_ her, stalking her through the darkness of her subconscious, and when she'd finally had a clear view of that predatorial presence, right before horror and pain eclipse the world, she'd looked up into her own grinning face. 

Lately, she seemed to occupy all the roles in her dreams.

They'd been non-stop every night the past week, and she was tired of them and tired of feeling like this. 

She was not thrilled with breakfast gifting her a grim twist on an old Trouble that she'd at least _thought_ resolved with a somewhat happy ending, and nor was she thrilled with Nathan's periodic dropped-in reminders about tomorrow.

"I remember this chick," Duke said. "The one that sent Nathan crazy, that time I had him chained to the deck of the _Rouge_."

Nathan's face darkened, because sure, he and Duke were now getting intimate with each other on a regular basis, but there were still certain things that he absolutely did not appreciate being reminded of. But he only said, "Ray's the one with the Trouble."

They had left early when Nathan burst back in, jolting Audrey out of her bad dreams and almost out of bed. He had called up emergency services on his cellphone without even greeting her. She thought she'd been lucky he'd waited long enough for her to join him on his charge back out of her apartment again. He hadn't waited long enough for her to put her clothes on -- she'd had to grab them and sprint after him in her nightwear. She'd slung herself into the Bronco and got changed while they were speeding out. She'd pried enough details from Nathan to phone back Duke, who'd been left in the dust, and explain that it was a boat accident up the coast and not the world ending. He could wake up and have _coffee_ and make breakfast ready for their return and was not obliged to follow.

Gradually, she'd filled in the details beyond 'boat accident', via a series of questions that had gained tortuous curt answers. Then they'd pulled up and she'd seen them -- Ray McBreen and Mr Sperry.

Nathan had been looking helplessly around, going crazy in ways which were at least not the same as last time Ray had been around, and finally burst out that there was also a missing woman and a missing... missing _dead man_ in the picture.

"Oh, Nathan," she'd said, when she connected the dots and figured out Garland had been there, and had vanished. She'd pulled him in against her and held him, as the whole strange awakening and dash out from her bed finally made sense.

"He was _real_ ," Nathan said now, insistently, over the breakfast table. "As real as _Duke_." He poked Duke in the arm to demonstrate his realness, prompting an "Ow!" and Duke batting his finger away. "We... hugged." He fell curtly silent again, face reddening with the admission of sentiment. Nathan couldn't feel, but a hug should give him enough information of a person's solidity and presence in the world, all the same.

"At least it went better than last time, then," Audrey said, a bit hopefully, and Duke cast her his do-not-try-to-comfort-people-you-social-imbecile glower. Audrey was personally annoyed that she tended to get that glower from him more often than Nathan did. She was _not_ the more socially challenged among them.

"It's okay, man," Duke said, picking up the reins, voice grim and low key. "We'll find out what happened to him and Lily both. Figure out what Trouble is behind it and what's going on now."

"We put a missing-person out on Lily," Audrey said. "We weren't sure what to do about Garland."

"Probably better not to advertise that the dead Police Chief was walking around," Nathan said with a sigh, looking away from both of them. He fumbled his slightly trembling fingers through the act of gulping his coffee. "I've a morning meeting with Vince and some Guard people, and Jonas from the town council."

Jonas was also affiliated with the Good Shepherd Church. Duke said, "That's going to go _so_ well." He eyed the clock. It had stubbornly not even hit half past seven yet. 

"Have to get the two sides to talk sometime," Nathan said. "Jonas is one of the reasonable ones and -- unironically -- thank God for him. Voice of reason. Has the ear of Pattison, usually manages to get him on-side. Doesn't think the Troubled should be exterminated, just prayed for. Still scrambling to recover the Church's face from the antics of the group back in the summer -- _he_ thinks they've something to recover face over."

Duke tossed up his hands and made sarcastic eyebrows. "Whoopee. I still think you could abuse your power to get me restraining orders against the lot of them."

"Too far across the line, Duke," Nathan said, though honestly, he looked like he wished it wasn't. "Too many of them. The worst got jail time, at least we made some of it stick, and you weren't _actually_ one of the people they abducted, you walked in there under your own free will, technically."

"Poked and prodded by my dead _murderer_ father and threatened by the Rev," Duke responded. "That special kind of free will."

Audrey's head thudded. "Let's get back to Lily, okay? Lily disappeared, Ray was unconscious..."

"Lily always went looking for a piano," Nathan offered. They all three of them turned for a moment to look at Audrey's, standing in the far corner of the open plan apartment.

"She's not here," Duke said.

Audrey grimaced. Since she had come back home following Malcove's Trouble and her head injury, she had discovered she'd forgotten how to play. She hadn't worked around to telling the boys that. It was strange and frightening, and she didn't want to think or talk about the conclusions it pointed towards. Brain damage, her _memories_ , her other selves. The _self_ she had once been, originally, and had always hoped to recover one day. The core of who she _was_.

Who she maybe _wasn't_ anymore, if she was right about this.

No choice but to talk about it if they managed to drag her to this appointment tomorrow. She glared down at her pancakes and her mood, actually improved by the early morning excursion, tanked.

"Nearest piano inland would be the church hall up on Spire Grove," Duke said.

"How do you even know that?" Nathan asked, squinting at him. 

"I know many things. You know that, Nathan."

Audrey groped back a semblance of cheer from Duke's leering smile and his hand curling around Nathan's thigh. "Ray's Trouble is connected to Lily," she said, realising something. _Love_ , she thought. _It's all about love_. "His _Trouble_ isn't actually to turn sane people mad and mad people sane."

"...What?" Nathan asked blankly.

Duke pointed at Nathan. "He looked pretty mad, last time we did this dance."

"Ray's Trouble allowed Ray to be with Lily," Audrey explained patiently. "The rest was a side product. The music... did something to the brain... that had the effect he needed. Ray needed Lily to be sane if he was going to be with her, so that's what his Trouble did. Do you see?"

Nathan nodded soberly. "I heard the music. Garland was on the beach. I only heard _Lily_ after the music was played. Ray's Trouble doesn't help fix Howard Sperry's brain any more." He paused. "Lily didn't make it."

"We can't be sure until we talk to Ray," Audrey backtracked, not wanting to be right in this instance. "We can't stop looking for Lily in the meantime. She _could_ still be out there, not able to take care of herself properly."

Duke grunted. "Yeah, and in this peaceful, loving little town, someone might mistake her for Troubled instead of just brain damaged."

Audrey winced.

"We're clamping down on the incidents," Nathan said, instantly defensive. Duke wrinkled his nose, which was pretty fair, when there'd been two attacks on known Troubled already this week.

"We should stop by the church hall on the way in," Audrey declared. "Check it just in case." She gobbled down the last of her pancakes and stood up, swilling the rest of her coffee as she pulled her gear together. 

"You're going _now_?" Duke asked, with some dismay, looking to the clock again.

"Sorry." Nathan was already on his feet and he'd been standing -- and fidgety to boot -- all though breakfast. "Might mean we get to shoot off early, later."

"No, it won't," Duke countered. "You _say_ that and it never happens."

" _Audrey_ might get to come back early, later," Nathan amended. He paused and twitched a bit and pulled a face before he asked, "You want to come?"

"Not in the way you mean," Duke said, then grimaced and got up too. "Yeah, okay, _fine_. If you're sure. I thought last week you were talking about not being seen together so often. Not reminding people, wasn't that what you said?"

"I don't think it makes much difference any more." Nathan sounded drained and oddly defeated when he said that, in a manner that took Audrey aback.

Duke was attacking the clear-up of the breakfast table, grabbing the empty plates and cups quickly while Audrey and Nathan readied. He was still hopping on one foot trying to get a boot on as they were waiting at the door. Maybe the sight drove Audrey's headache back, just a little.

Duke opted to follow them in his own truck, to keep his mobility and his options open. Their first stop at the church hall didn't turn up any sign of Lily. "School piano?" Nathan offered, a fraction hopefully, and they swung by the junior school that was out that way, too, but it was silent and locked up with the early hour.

"I think we all already know the answer," Audrey said, as they got back into their two vehicles. She squeezed Nathan's arm through his jacket, knowing he would only see the gesture of comfort. Duke pulled a grimacing smile and waved for them to start up ahead of him, then followed them to the station. 

Despite the early hour, Nathan got corralled by someone almost as soon as he got in sight of his office. Audrey sighed and tugged Duke onward, grabbed coffees for all three of them, and left Duke standing with Nathan's cup and his own while she tried to track down Lucassi, who was a notoriously early riser anyway -- assuming he actually slept, which she had a feeling that he fairly often didn't.

It turned out that Lucassi was already at the hospital, called in because of his history with Mr Sperry. It wasn't time for Nathan's meeting yet and she was damned if she was going to abandon him to the wolves hours before she had to, so she extricated him with _some_ exaggeration for the importance of the task and his indispensability to it.

"I could have seen him off in another five minutes," Nathan muttered, slightly subdued, as they headed out again.

"No, Wuornos," Audrey said sharply. "I _know_ how this goes. I also happen to know he's pencilled in for Thursday and you're only going to get to revisit the exact same territory _then_."

"I never wanted this job, you know," Nathan said gruffly, looking at both her and Duke, and she wondered where exactly that had come from. "The old Chief... dad... he wanted me to have it. I was--" His face twisted and he shut up.

Audrey was a little surprised when Duke got in ahead of her, though she shouldn't be. "Parental expectation's a bitch." He offered a shrug to temper that. "I didn't want you in this job, either."

"Worst nightmare, Crocker?" Nathan asked, showing his teeth.

"Yeah, well, it did sort of turn from my pathological fear of your free misuse and abuse of parking tickets into the problem of not getting to fuck you through the mattress nearly often enough lately." Duke's eyes were grim, and the shadows of the same grimness lurked behind Nathan's, and neither of them mentioned how Nathan's parental expectations had still been by far the better deal.

"You're not thinking of quitting?" Audrey prodded, going for the lightest tone she could muster, though it came out sounding rather false. "Sure, the meetings are dull, but tell me they're not _that_ bad."

Nathan shook his head and opened the driver's door of the Bronco, and after a moment Audrey realised that was all she was getting. 

***

In all fairness, it hadn't been like Nathan had brought up the subject of Simon. He'd talked about his dad, his job, and his legacy, but the awareness had passed between both of them and now it wasn't like Duke could un-think it. Simon was on his mind and they were headed to see a guy who resurrected peoples' dead. Possibly.

Duke wasn't going _near_ Ray unless he could be sure that wouldn't happen. The last encounter with Simon Crocker from beyond the grave had been enough of a brainfuck. He did _not_ need a rinse-and-repeat. He broached the subject with them as they disembarked from their two vehicles. "So. Ray. Might bring back the dead. I _do not_ want my dad along for the ride, this Trouble around. What the fuck do we look out for to make sure that doesn't happen, or do I just stay out of the room?"

"Music. It happens when he plays music." Audrey paused in the entrance hallway of the medical centre and Duke guessed she was berating herself for not having caught that. She'd been preoccupied lately. "He needs a musical instrument. I doubt he'll have one in the hospital, but we'll go in first and double check." She looked at Nathan. "You'll be okay if Garland shows up again?"

" _Yes,_ " Nathan breathed, harshly. He cleared his throat. "...No. I shouldn't. It's a Trouble. I shouldn't get used to -- shouldn't get any ideas about him sticking around. I'll stay with Duke while you check." 

Duke thumped Nathan's shoulder hard enough that even he could register the jolt and got a narrow look for it.

The Crocker Legacy had been rearing its head more and more lately, monolithic but unacknowledged in the background. If there was no longer a way to get rid of the Troubles for twenty seven years and the course of a generation, well, there was still one way they all knew could permanently get rid of individual Troubles.

Funny, but the weird alternate reality vacation where he _had not_ been Troubled had actually helped a little. The set of other memories he'd come back with didn't know shit about the Crocker Legacy, hadn't had those experiences with Kyle Hopkins and Harry Nix. It dulled the whole thing, made it more manageable.

Still, he couldn't help but be acutely aware of the expectations of the town, now that waiting for the Barn was no longer a solution. Plenty more desperate Troubled people who had families they didn't want to pass their curses onto. Duke wasn't going to be a tool for _anyone_ , particularly not when killing people was in the picture.

He hung behind Nathan and Audrey as they walked through the corridors of the hospital. No Ray yet, first they tracked down Lucassi and found him dealing with the other guy. Duke had met Sperry only briefly before, when Ray's Trouble caused chaos right after Audrey came to Haven. He was being a whole lot quieter now.

"It's a sad thing to see," Lucassi sighed, rubbing a patch in the centre of his forehead with his thumb as he grimaced through into the semi-private ward. "I'd thought he'd sailed off to a happier outcome."

"He had six months," Audrey said. "That was a gift, I'm sure. At least he's... he's no _worse_ than he started off, is he? Was he hurt?"

"Cuts and bruises, immersion in the cold water," Lucassi said dismissively. "I'm arranging for his transfer back to the Freddie in the morning. Still a shame. But you're right. None of us must dismiss the value of that six months. Travelling the oceans with friends, able to converse and live again." His face darkened and his mood turned, his hand going to Nathan's arm, fingers digging in. "Nathan... I've not been able to ascertain from the reports, or the emergency personnel... You were there. I'm told they're not looking for William, that there's no expectation of there being another person out there to find on the beach. You didn't forget--"

"It's okay," Nathan said. "Lily told me he'd found some kind of cure out in Hawaii." As Lucassi's face lit up he added, "She also said it didn't work on Howard."

"Still," Lucassi mused, deeply interested, "what works once _should_ work again. I'll look that up... Thank you."

"Can I go in and see him?" Audrey pointed through the door at Sperry. "I don't know him well, and he can't give us any information, but he's an old friend of sorts. Twice over, apparently. Of Lucy as well as me."

Lucassi nodded and made a little flourish with his hands. Duke, nearest, held the door for her to go in, then looked back at Nathan, who shrugged and came to stand in the door next to him.

"Hello, Mr. Sperry," Audrey said, perching on the edge of the mattress and touching his hand. "Remember me?" She watched his face. They all did, but it stayed blank and unmoving. "I hear William is doing well. I hope you had the best six months. Dr Lucassi's going to make sure you get looked after back in your old home again, and Ray's going to be all right. We've got him, and we're looking for Lily." She rubbed his hand again. "You get better soon."

She waited until they'd left the room and the door was closed before she let it show on her face, and released a sigh. "He gave me almost my first clue to my past selves along the way. He was the one who told me about Lucy." 

Duke shuffled his feet, because he had some guilty feelings left about that. "Guess he didn't get the memo about the conspiracy."

"No... No, I guess he didn't."

Lucassi was looking at them with his eyebrows raised. "Do you want to go in to see Ray?"

"Um," Audrey said. "Just me first. We need to make absolutely sure he doesn't have any sort of musical instrument within reach."

"My dear Detective Parker," Lucassi said, "that was the _first_ thing I ensured when I got word he was here. I remember too well what he can do, myself." He shared a wry glance with Nathan.

Audrey pulled a face, apologetic. "Well, just in case. I'd rather be safe than sorry."

"By all means," Lucassi granted. "He hasn't been conscious yet, but the nurse told me he'd shown some signs of approaching it, so perhaps you'll be in luck and we'll be able to get some more of their story."

They walked slowly along the corridors ahead of Lucassi, who occasionally waved then on down one or other corridor intersection. He was an odd man, but a dedicated one. Duke would never forget what he'd done during the plant Trouble affair.

"You should know," Nathan said, as the three of them retreated a little way down the corridor to wait while Audrey went in to do her check, "that it's possible Ray's Trouble mutated to do something... else."

"It doesn't make people destructively insane any longer?" Lucassi asked, and at Nathan's small nod concluded, "Well, that _is_ a bonus. An experience never forgotten, I'm afraid."

Audrey came back out before they could either compare notes on that or explain what they thought it now _did_ do. "Hey, it's okay. He's awake and asking for a musical instrument, but I told him 'sorry, no'." She looked vaguely guilty.

"He's _asking_ for--?" Lucassi began, confused, but he was already moving forward, boosting Audrey out of the way in his hurry to reach his patient.

She regained her balance and tossed Duke and Nathan an eyeroll, and they followed her into the room. Both somewhat reluctantly... Duke thought that Nathan's feet seemed to be dragging almost as much as his own were, despite clearly having wanted to see Garland again. Then again, talking to the dead was an intimidating prospect.

Lucassi was checking over Ray as they walked in, the musician trying to sluggishly raise himself up in bed while Lucassi made fussy, distracted attempts to soothe him and make him relax back. The bedside manner _did_ explain why Lucassi tended to focus himself upon the Freddie and the morgue. For all that the man did _care_ about his patients, it was an academic sort of care that tended to fall down around the reactions of actual people.

"Detective Wuornos?" Ray said with surprise. His voice was dry and it croaked, barely there. He blinked a bit more, eyes hazy, looking past the obstruction of Dr Lucassi. "Duke?"

"'Lo." Duke raised a hand.

"You have to -- I _need_ to play music," he said, desperation underlying his voice. "The nurses took my pipes. You have to bring me something." His voice cracked and disappeared entirely. Lucassi paused to pour a glass of water from a jug on the table beside the bed, and offered it to Ray's lips.

"Slow sips," the doctor warned.

"We need to ask you some questions," Audrey said. "When we're done, and as soon as it's practical--" She frowned at the cast on Ray's leg. "Well, then we'll make sure to get you somewhere private enough that you can play."

"You don't understand," Ray groaned.

"I think I _do_ ," she asserted. "Ray, what happened out at sea? What happened to Lily?"

He fell back weakly, stopping trying to fight. Lucassi put the glass down to fluff up the pillows and picked it up again, offering it anew when Ray didn't answer. They waited. 

"It wasn't in the wreck," he rasped. "It was before that. Weeks ago. She got sick."

Audrey nodded. "I'm so sorry."

"We couldn't head anywhere in time. We were too far away, and there was a storm. We tried to go through it, but all the shaking around only made things worse. I think... I think it was just flu. Only _flu_. But she needed medicine, and everything was cold and damp, and we couldn't keep her warm. After it was over..." He choked. "We buried her at sea. Impossible to -- we _couldn't_ keep her on the boat for the weeks it would take to come home, and I couldn't put in on land. The music... the music stopped working on Howie. I didn't know how I was going to _explain_ it all... We turned back to Haven. A week later, I strummed my guitar by accident as I moved it, and there she was again. Alive. _Real_. Still as beautiful as she'd always been. She was real, and so long as I keep playing, she _stays_ real. You have to give me something to play!"

"We will find you somewhere where it's safe to do that," Lucassi said, though his eyes had gone wide throughout Ray's confession. "I hope."

Which went down in Ray's expression about as well as could be predicted. Audrey emphasized, "We _will_."

"What caused the boat to run aground?" Nathan asked. His eyes searched Ray's. "Wait. You got sick, too. Lily said... on the shore..."

"It's subsiding now," Lucassi said. "He should recover in a few days. He has a broken leg, which I'd surmise must have hit the boat or a rock."

"I... must have passed out at the wheel," Ray rasped, quietly, "and Lily must have disappeared before she could rouse me. I remember being on the shore, soaked and cold and hurting, in the dark. It took me hours before I could crawl far enough to find one of my instruments in the wreckage..." His voice disappeared again, and this time he took the glass from Lucassi when it was offered, lifting it too his lips in his trembling hands. Something crossed his face, suddenly, and he held it there, wavering.

His lips pursed.

"No!" Duke rapped sharply, suddenly seeing the future clear as day, like _that_ was his own new fucking Trouble. "Get that off him!"

Lucassi, the closest, bemusedly reached for the glass, too slow, too unconcerned, not understanding, even as realisation came over Audrey's face and she made a more intent grab, but was just as _too late_ to stop Ray from blowing over the lip of the glass.

A single note rang out, clear and true.

"Oh, honey," Lily crouched next to Ray's bed, hugging herself to his side. "I'm so glad you're safe. They got you away from that beach, like they said."

Duke was looking around frantically before the bomb had even dropped. Hell, he _knew_ what was coming. Lucassi was gaping at an old man behind him who'd just laid a hand on his shoulder. His face was stricken and incredulous and as afraid as it was joyful. Nathan's face had all gone hard as he stared at Garland, who pursed his lips and stared back and demanded, "What? So I was wrong. Blame a guy for being dead. Still, I'm back now." Duke kept on looking, turning. He _had_ to be there. He'd just watched it happen with the other three... Where was _Simon_?

He spun as someone poked him hard in the centre of the back -- someone who'd moved _with_ him, dancing around with his movements like a child's game -- then rounded his shoulder. "Hey there, sailor."

Evi. It was _Evi_.

"Love," Audrey said, and even though she was saying that, echoing her assertion of earlier, she was still looking around herself in horror. "It's about _love_."

Well. Simon Crocker never had been about to materialise over something like _that_.

"Come here," Evi said, and moved in, reaching up her hand to curl it around Duke's neck and bend his lips down to hers. Then Duke's lips and arms were full of her. She felt warm and alive again, and his lovers were _right there watching,_ and oh, _fuck_...

"Wait, wait, wait!" He managed to disengage. "Okay, you -- you're _here_. And you're... you do _know_ , don't you?" Suddenly he felt all deer-in-headlights about the possibility that she didn't. Fuck! Why had he even asked that question?!

"That I'm _dead_?" There was only gentle sarcasm in her voice. "Sure I know. And don't worry, I still _know_ that you've moved on from me, too." She cast a significant glance at Nathan, though he was engrossed with other things. "That was just for old times' sake."

"You're, ah--" There was more going on here than just him, but all the same, Duke couldn't help but honestly just fucking _ignore_ the rest of them, Audrey still looking like she didn't know what to do with this and Lucassi as caught up as anyone. "Are you _all right_? Wherever you are -- I mean, you're right here, _now_ ,obviously, but -- I don't know what happens, after, and..." He gestured vaguely.

"I don't know either, and I can't tell you." She shrugged. "I moved on, too, Duke. Remember that." She sent another glance toward Nathan, who this time did notice, because Audrey had opted to go to him and Garland, who she knew best, and he was paying a modicum more attention. When he registered Evi, his face blanked weirdly. 

"Nathan?" Duke asked, not understanding.

"He didn't tell you? Well, it's not a long story, but it's not one that much matters now, either. How 'bout we do some catching up. Leave these guys to their thing and come tell me all the dirty details of life with Hero Type and Blondie." She ducked in close to him, urging him toward the door.

"Um, guys," Duke said, because honestly getting out sounded like a grand idea, and he had things to say to Evi, too, things he'd not realised he had to say until she was _dead_ and he could no longer say them. Plus he really, really didn't want to know how Garland Wuornos was going to react if Nathan was dumb enough to let on about their relationship, and he did not want to be on hand for that either. "You don't _really_ need me for this, check?"

Lily looked up from Ray's bedside and said, "You've got about two hours, unless you make it back here again first."

Evi shrugged. "Two hours is plenty to reminisce. Any more and we'd both be bored and... _awkward_. Thanks, girl." She sashayed her hips and raised her hand in a static wave. "People. Blondie. Wuornos. Duke and I are making tracks. I _promise_ I'll give him back once I'm done with my afterlife break, 'kay?"

Was it really going to be as simple as that? They were turning and Garland was muttering, "That's some woman", and Audrey was expressing some concern about letting Evi out of sight, but Nathan stuck to, "It's a Trouble. Try and remember not to get too attached, Duke." 

It couldn't _really_ be that easy. Nothing was ever that easy. Ray was stroking Lily's face and lifting the drinking glass again, stretching its song this time into a little faltering tune, and--

Duke realised even as he put his hand to the door handle that there was someone visible through the window, right on the other side of the door.

The ginger haired nurse staring back at him gaped and shoved the door open, causing Evi and himself to leap back, startling everyone else. "You can't all be in here! We have strict restrictions on the numbers of-- Oh, Dr. Lucassi. I didn't realise _you_ were here."

"Duke Crocker," a voice drawled from the shadows of the door behind her. "Have you accepted your destiny yet?"

"Oh my _fuck_." Duke almost fell on his ass. 

Evi's hand had risen to her mouth and she clutched Duke's jacket tight as she hissed, "You old _bastard_."

The nurse who'd interrupted them had frozen, eyes so wide and her face stretched with something very much not fear. She pressed her hand over her heart and spun around to face the dead man. "Oh, _Reverend Driscoll_!" The word for it, Duke thought grimly, was _rapturous_. Enraptured. Captivated. Bespelled. He'd vaguely known that there were some of the churchgoers who felt like that about the old Reverend. "It's a miracle!"

Love, Audrey had said. It's about love.

" _Driscoll_?" Garland said sharply, at the same time as Nathan asked, " _Reverend_?"

"He's no holy man," Evi said, "he's a murderous _fuck_."

"How dare you!" the nurse exclaimed. " _He_ was murdered -- murdered by--" Her mouth dropped open all the further as her shaking hand pointed at Audrey and her voice shrivelled to a poisonous hiss. "I _know you_. And you!" She jabbed her finger at Nathan. "You were there that day Kyle died! I remember you! You're one of them!"

"We never did manage to track down everyone who took part in that," Nathan growled. "Miss, that's an admission of guilt. I need you to come to the station with us to answer some questions. You--" He glared at the Rev. "You're under arrest. You've got two hours, you can spend them in a cell."

"Can't arrest a dead man, Nathan," Driscoll said, his own insane humour twinkling in his eyes. He nodded to Audrey. "Detective Parker." Anyone would think she hadn't killed him. Civility rolled pretty easy off his lying tongue.

"You're solid." Aaaand Nathan was _absolutely_ taking his handcuffs out. "I can put these on you, I can arrest you. You have fun persuading your lawyers to come spring you before your time runs out." 

"You do that, son," Garland said, approvingly. "I'll help."

"You go... Wuornoses!" Duke finally managed to muster words, along with an admittedly desperate-sounding solo round of applause. But Nathan was getting a kick out of this, and man, with the Rev right there, his face twisted in that sucked-lemon expression, Duke was going to milk it for all he was worth. 

Evi, beside him, gave a bemused thumbs-up and offered, "Yay the cops?"

"Duke, get out," Nathan said, wearily, putting his cuffs on Driscoll, dragging the Rev around. 

The nurse beat her fists on his shoulders, and actually Nathan probably wasn't even aware she was doing it, but Audrey dragged her away with a stern hand on her arm. "Hey, don't worry. You get to come too." 

Garland moved in on the other side of Nathan, and Duke could hardly believe it, but it seemed that they _had_ this. The Rev was cuffed and in police custody for his day release from Hell.

"Nathan's right, Duke," Audrey said, turning from the woman. "The last thing you need is his sort of poison hissing in your ear. Take a hike, go get a coffee or a _drink_ and talk it over with Evi until Ray's Trouble runs its course. Lucassi! Get that glass off him, this time! Can you get a tune off plastic crockery?"

"I--" Duke looked back over the rest of them, and Evi yanked hard on his arm. "Okay. Two hours. Check."

"C'mon." Evi's glower for the Rev faded as she turned aside. "Catching up to do. I don't have any time left to waste on that old toad, considering he took the rest of mine away from me."

***

"Believe it or not," Audrey groaned, collapsing next to Garland and Nathan at the table outside the cell, hugging the coffee she'd come back with, "this is actually kind of a best case scenario."

"Well, he's under lock and key." Garland eyed the Rev stalking slowly back and forth through the shadows at the back of his cell. He hadn't acknowledged them in a while, except to throw a few deeply scornful glances their way. They'd left the woman to stew in an interview room with Stan watching over her. Nathan couldn't actually throw her into a cell unless they could find something substantial to corroborate that she'd been at the mass kidnapping effort that day. He could only ask questions, and they weren't even going to _try_ that until the Rev was good and gone. They were going to sit and watch him until that happened. Garland added, "Something I'd have wanted to see in my lifetime for sure. Whoops." He toasted ironically with his coffee mug.

Audrey rolled a balled-up candy wrapper under her finger on the table top. Garland had said, "Can't no-one bitch about my blood sugar now," and used up all the change from her and Nathan's pockets on the vending machine, so they had a collection of thsoe rolling around the table. "If you don't mind me asking, sir, you don't seem... upset."

"Not like there's anything I can do about it one way or another," he grunted. "Chance to see the kid again, find out how you're all doing. Even help at another crisis. Good times."

"Um." Audrey got stuck on the fact she really didn't know whether or not it was a good idea to tell Garland about how the Barn hadn't come. For his own peace of mind, probably _not_. But if there was the possibility that he could help them... She looked at Nathan, seeking counsel, and he tipped his eyes in the direction of the Rev. and gave a tiny shake of his head.

Yeah, absolutely. The Reverend had managed to cause a _lot_ of harm the last time he came back from the dead, and he hadn't even been able to touch things that time. She nodded. Okay, they were going to sit on this. Only another hour to go.

She listened to stilted talk between Garland and Nathan for a while and grew increasingly on-edge as the conversation repeatedly skirted the vacuum of the current date. The scar on her head burned and itched, and she longed to scratch it, but it was just visible coming out from under her hairline into the skin of her forehead, and she didn't want to draw attention to it. Eventually, she said, "Why don't the two of you go outside, get more coffee?" They'd run out a while ago and been poking at empty cups. "I'll stay and watch the Rev."

She cast a meaningful look at Nathan. Okay, this was her permission to tell his dad as much about what had been happening as he so chose, where the Rev couldn't overhear it. When they came back, at least Garland wouldn't then unintentionally manoeuvre them into letting slip anything in front of the Rev.

"All right." Nathan jerked his head, Garland solemnly nodded and got up and left with him. Terse bookends from different generations, Audrey thought. She gave her head a good scratch while she was closing the door after them. Instead of sitting down when she turned back, she leaned against the wall where she could watch Driscoll. 

"You ever feel even a glimmer of remorse for killing me, Devil woman?" his voice rumbled from the shadows.

Audrey coughed half a laugh. The truth? No. No, she had _not_. "I think we both know who's the greater sinner."

"He cast _you_ out along with them." The Rev strode closer to the bars, his face coming out of partial shadow. "I don't believe that you're just the one who pays for their sins. Not for a long time. Who are you really, Audrey Parker? _Lucy_. And the rest."

Her insides chilled nastily. "The part where I'm _Audrey Parker_ is _all_ that matters." It _wasn't_. But she might have to make it so.

"Audrey, Lucy, Sarah..." She was surprised that he knew the name. "Veronica... Phyllis... _Marlene_..."

"How do you know those names?" Audrey asked, trying to keep the startlement from her voice. The Guard had known a certain amount. Vince and Dave had known, those twisty old liars. The other faction, who'd been far more close-mouthed about pooling information, had to have their own hidden archives and resources, too. "Where is it? Where's that information hidden away?"

He shook his head. "I don't have long, I'm not going to use the time I have to _help_ you. The only real way to clean this town of its evil is to cleanse it with blood, to leech out the Troubles. Generations have known that. One day, it's you who'll need the handiwork of a Crocker... and _then_ you'll beg your friend to kill." His eyes sparked at something he saw in her face. "It's already happened."

" _Once_." She bit out the word furiously. "For a man who didn't deserve to live and an alternative that would have been much, much worse." She stabbed her finger at him accusingly, anger rising in her. "I _know_ that Simon Crocker killed people whose Troubles were harmless, just because they _were_ Troubled and you made them believe that meant they were cursed, _damned_ ," she spat the word, "and needed to be killed." 

Driscoll shrugged. "The curses in this town change and adapt. A death now to save five, ten, dozens decades or centuries from now. This is the price of containment. You've been judge and jury once, and used Duke for executioner. Do not moralize with _me_."

Audrey wished she could have made like Duke and avoided any contact with this man altogether. "Oh, you are so full of _crap_. You'd have killed that little girl by your own hand, and _yours_ doesn't bring salvation, just _death_. You'd have killed her for nothing."

"A savage who'd already fed upon human flesh. Why should such a creature to be suffered to live? Surely no hope of salvation for such a one in this life or the next."

"Actually, she's doing pretty good at the slaughterhouse with her sisters," Audrey threw back. "They don't need to kill _people_. They get to choose."

She turned her back on him and sat down again. Her head ached. Long minutes passed.

She was already starting to feel the restlessness when the Rev piped up again. "They've been gone too long, Detective Parker. You know what that means..." He sounded _hellishly_ amused. "They've succumbed to temptation, and don't pretend you don't know it."

"They'll be--" Audrey scrapped the angry protest and reached for her phone. She still wasn't leaving the Rev alone for a moment. She stabbed the keypad angrily and raised the phone to her ear. "Nathan, where are you? It's someone else's turn to take a spell guarding this creep... Are you _driving_?"

"Sorry, Parker..." Nathan sounded deeply uncomfortable. "It wasn't -- he wanted--"

"To go back to the hospital," Audrey filled in, annoyed. "In time to get a refresher."

"Look, he _knows_ more than we do. Maybe he can get Vince and Dave to spit out something new. Could you get hold of someone, let them know I'll be late for that meeting this morning?"

" _Nathan_ ," Audrey snapped.

"Give me that here!" She heard Garland foiled in the background, faintly beneath the engine roar, and his voice continue to chunter on faintly. "You tell her I'm not going sit idly dead while my town goes to hell! We're gonna figure this out. This -- this is _horseshit_. Barn's been coming regular for centuries, right on the meteor shower, every twenty seven years..." The chuntering grew fainter as Nathan moved or covered up the phone, and then it cut off.

Audrey sighed. She wasn't worried that the Rev would have heard Garland from over in his cell, but she couldn't help not liking this turn of events. Also--

"Shut _up_ ," she snapped at the Rev's leering grin. "I'm not concerned about Garland! I _am_ pissed the hell off because now I have to spend more time stuck babysitting your undead ass."

It took about another thirty minutes of really not helping her headache before the Rev vanished, just gone between one moment and the next. She sighed and left the cell, putting her keys away, and was about to ring Nathan when she saw him coming in through the door at the other end of the main corridor.

"Nathan!" She looked around, but no Garland. She turned back to Nathan. "Where is he?"

"Talking to the Teagues. We'll liaise once this meeting's over. It's me who has to hear Ray play..."

"Oh, _wonderful_ ," Audrey jeered, acerbic even though she winced at how she sounded. "So we're doing this? What, are we going to make him Police Chief again from beyond the grave, since you don't want it?"

Nathan gave her a hurt look which made her instantly regret the comment. 

"I don't mean it like that. Just... it's not possible or practical to keep bringing him back. I know you miss him, but you also know that I'm not sure how much _Ray_ is in trouble, with his dependence on his... well... Trouble. On his dead wife. You, in particular, can't keep running to Ray every few hours to keep your father alive, when we both know he's dead and _gone_."

"They're real, Audrey." 

She reached up and rubbed his shoulder. "I know." That was the _problem_.

"I know he has to go." Nathan touched her arm briefly. "But he wants to help us _now_."

"Did you tell him about my head?"

"Just the Barn."

She _glared_ at him again.

"We're going to tell Dr. Abernathy about your head. Let dad pursue his own solutions and see what he comes up with. No need to get fixed on the idea of that being the problem."

"Oh, why not, when we already have one of us fixed on the idea of that _not_ being the problem!" Audrey exclaimed. But she knew... She knew why Nathan was fixed on that, aside from the obvious. Because if that _was_ why the Barn hadn't come, then there was probably not going to be anything anyone could do about it.

Nathan sighed and she let him go, swinging down the corridor and onward to his meeting. 

Duke showed up five minutes later, both oddly more content and more subdued. She supposed a morning spent with your dead estranged wife would do that. "Where's the Rev?" was the first thing he said.

"Gone," Audrey assured him, and watched some additional tension drain away. "Garland's still around, though."

Duke gave a snort. "Trust Nathan. 'Don't get too attached'. Of _course_ he's the one who won't do the letting go."

"It's temporary," Audrey said, very hard, then looked at her watch and groaned. "Okay, I have to interview this nurse before we run out of excuse to hold her. You can't be in the _room_ , but would you mind staying on the other side of the one-way glass? You were out there with that crowd longer than Nathan and I were. You can see if anything about her rings any bells."

"I don't remember her being there, right now," Duke said. "But there were upwards of thirty of them, so yeah, sure. Maybe something will come back."

***

Nathan walked out of the meeting keyed-up and on-edge. More than two hours had passed, which meant he'd missed any chance of getting to the hospital again before Garland disappeared and the old man was going to be cranky. When he got to his office, Duke was hanging outside, and asked, hopefully, "Lunch?"

"Yeah, why not?" Nathan allowed, reaching past Duke's head to push the door open, and when he withdrew his arm, curling it around Duke's neck at the line of pink flesh above his collar. He pushed Duke into the office and into an embrace as he heard the door close itself behind them.

"Hey, hey!" Duke flailed a little as their lips met before giving in and letting Nathan kiss him. "This counts as 'at work', right? And, hey, how about Chief Wuornos Senior lurking around?"

"He's gone for now," Nathan said.

"You mean--?"

"I mean _gone_. For now."

"Well, that's a different matter." Duke slid his eyes over to check that the blinds were shut -- mostly they were -- and pulled Nathan back to him. "If we bring him back and install him as a permanent feature, does that mean you spend more time with us again? No-one much cares about _Detective_ Wuornos' love life, right?"

Nathan coughed a laugh, making Duke's moustache twitch as the air blew out. "I'd have to live in Ray McBreen's pocket, Duke."

"Does it work with recorded music?" Duke asked, and Nathan stilled. "...Worth checking?"

"Yeah," Nathan said. "Absolutely worth checking." He had a digital voice recorder for taking dictations somewhere on his desk, and he disengaged from Duke to go fetch it, checking it was charged up and pushing it into his pocket. "Just need to remember to be careful where I play it back. Buy some earphones, maybe."

Duke grimaced. "It wasn't too bad, seeing Evi again... No. Good; it was good. Cleared a few things up. It'd be awkward if it happened every day." He shot Nathan a contemplative look. "She had a story about you. And Max Hansen. And one _sneaky_ kiss."

_Damn_. "I didn't want you to-- Is it okay?" He thought about it and added, "You kissed her yourself when she came back."

Duke pulled a face. "Yeah. Yeah, Nathan, it is okay. I just wish I'd known that I was sending her off. Then again, I had a fucking _lot_ on my mind at the time. I'd just been a vampire. Big hole through the gut. Giant demon kid just tried to eat my face. That was a busy day." He shook his head. "Nathan... today was a _gift_. Just... don't let it overstay its welcome."

"It's different," Nathan reasoned. "Garland can help us. We need the help. I don't have a choice about doing this."

"Max Hansen, though," Duke said, side-stepping grimly. "Evi said it was more than just some fleeting encounter. She talked about some kind of... spiritual energy vampirism thing? You _fought_ him."

"It wasn't anything I couldn't handle," Nathan said, squirming as Duke scrutinised him, and reached behind himself to try and pry off the inevitable hand on his ass.

"You _were_ a bit different, after that. Twitchy about your childhood. Weird about your old house. But... more like _you_ than you'd been in a while, as well, if that makes sense."

"I remembered some stuff," Nathan added reluctantly. "Things I'd forgotten, okay? It's... it's flashes, it's just flashes. I was four, five, _younger_. Max is -- he was a _ghost_. He didn't disappear with that Trouble. Sometimes he hangs around at the house. At the station, too. For all I know he's here right now. But he can't do anything any more."

"I guess that sucks for, uhm... both of you." Although Duke was now looking around nervously. "Can we go somewhere else, please?"

Nathan laughed. "Don't be ridiculous. Anyway, I don't think he _is_ here now, and if he is, he hates watching us do this more than anything." He groped Duke back and grinned broadly when that caused him to make a funny little noise.

"Oh, _man_. You're feeling me up to piss off your psychotic dead dad? The _worse_ one, I mean, I guess we have to be specific there. That's a... a special kind of fucked-up hot." Duke poked the pocket where the digital recorder had gone, among other nearby places. "If you switched that thing on now, I bet you could get some rude EVPs." 

"Some what?"

"Electronic Voice Phenomena. Ghost voices caught on tape. You could have conversations with -- okay, maybe not. But seriously, all this time combating the weird and you don't know what an EVP is?" 

"Alright, Duke," Nathan grunted, and sucked Duke's tongue into his mouth again. "You said something about lunch," he mumbled, very indistinctly.

"...Nathan!" The door rattled and was opened before Nathan could shout for whoever was outside it to wait, or even turn around. "Oh... Oh, my, I do apologise," Vince gabbled, falling back a step, eyes bulging even more than usual. Nathan and Duke were both still standing in each other's space, and what they'd been doing didn't leave much to interpretation.

"It's alright, Vince." Nathan smiled tightly as he and Duke disengaged. Wasn't as if Vince didn't know about the relationship, just he didn't usually get to see it demonstrated.

"Max Hansen is haunting Nathan's office," Duke said. "Apparently kissing really pisses him off. The way I see it, we were performing a solemn duty."

Vince grinned with such a feral fierceness that sparks seemed to light in his eyes. "You do that all you want, then, you boys." Then he caught himself, shook his head, and went back to the fluster with which he had burst in, and the downright belligerent being that hid behind the fumbling old man persona once again disappeared. "Nathan, your father -- _Garland_ \-- came to see me." He only waited a second to see if he was going to get a reaction off that. 

"Dead men walking, normal day for Haven," Nathan said with a tiny headshake. 

"Quite. Just as your... ghost..." Vince looked around, eyes narrowed.

"He can't do anything," Duke intoned, "or so I'm told."

"He wanted me to bring you some new things." 

Duke _groaned_ as Vince heaved the box of papers he'd been carrying up onto Nathan's desk.

Dinner... was delayed. Audrey, Nathan found out, was still caught up with the nurse they'd brought in for questioning. Duke hadn't remembered her, so Audrey had pulled in a few of the Troubled citizens who'd made the best witnesses before -- meaning the most aware through the ordeal of their abduction, since the Rev's people had done their best to keep everyone drugged.

Vince's information constituted more about the Troubles at the turn of the century, and a journal that for some reason they _hadn't_ been shown yet, with prophecies and riddles through its pages. A little arguing got Vince to reluctantly agree to make copies that afternoon, so that Nathan could go over the old writings in his own time -- "What time?" Duke muttered under his breath -- before he finally made moves to leave. 

"We _all_ want the Troubles gone," the old man fussed, a bit sharply, as he got up and brushed his pants down.

"Yeah. You're just so used to all your secrecy--"

"Duke isn't _wrong_ ," Nathan said wryly, in a more even tone, over whatever insult his lover had been about to offer. "I was my father's replacement, _supposed_ to be the Chief in this town. Why did you hide things so long? Why hide _this_ , even after everything was supposed to be out in the open now?"

Vince's shoulders hunched. "Been keeping the secrets in this town a long time." He looked at Duke.

"And there's still other people left not sharing theirs," Duke suggested. "Power? Leverage? Or just good old belligerence?"

"We could really use your wholehearted help," Nathan tried.

Vince's face wasn't really possible to read as his expression changed, but it settled on a shifty look as he said, "Garland asked me to tell you to try recorded music. Said he could do more for this town without the time limit. I... suppose you know what that means? This resurrection Trouble...?" His eyes glinted keenly despite his confusion.

"You thinking of installing him as Chief again?" Nathan asked, not entirely seriously, but it flustered Vince more than he'd bargained on. "Wait. That's what you were doing _before_. _You_ were the ones who had him re-buried when Kyle Hopkins' Trouble hit town. If _anyone_ knows all the old families Troubles..."

"Garland knows the territory, Nathan."

Nathan faltered and Vince took the opportunity to flee, diving through the door. 

"That old..." Duke grabbed Nathan's shoulder. "Don't you listen to him. I fucking hate it, but they don't need your dead dad back for someone to be doing this job right."

Nathan wavered. He cast his eyes after Vince, then back to Duke. "Maybe _I_ do." 

"Bullshit. You're thirty five, you do _not_ need to be hand-held by the old man. If you're having problems, they come from the fact the old man and the rest of the... the _old guard_... don't share information well."

"Mm." Nathan took out the digital recorder and tapped on it. "We need to go and see Ray again. Sorry about lunch."

"We're still having lunch. You don't need to perpetuate this Trouble. Garland's dead, leave him dead."

Nathan sighed. "We _need_ him, even if we don't need him as Chief. We lost too many people who could have given us answers."

"Garland wasn't any more forthcoming than Vince and Dave when he was alive, what makes you think that's going to change?" Duke shot back caustically.

"Because," Nathan scowled. "Because I have to _try_. He did this job twenty years -- lived through the Troubles before--"

"Yeah. Resolved things nice and neat, tied it in a bow for the next generation by sacrificing Lucy to the Barn." Duke raised his eyebrows. "Don't tell me you're not thinking it too. You're _glad_ the Barn broke."

"But Audrey isn't." Nathan glanced around covertly and lowered his voice as he leaned in to Duke. "And I have to hold this town together somehow. Sure, the Troubles have been going on a while. We've been dealing with them. We still have Audrey. But now... when there's no end in sight... You _know_ you don't want to be everyone's last resort."

Duke gave an exaggerated shudder. "Maybe we _should_ pretend Audrey's pregnant. Hey, don't look like that, Vince was the one who suggested it first. If folks in town think the Barn is only holding off for the baby..."

Nathan rolled his eyes. "She'd kill us."

"Point taken."

"We need to get back to the hospital," Nathan said, waving the digital recorder more emphatically, "and see if this works."

"If it does, which one of us gets to deliver the bad news about that long-held McBreen dream of a record contract...?"

***

Duke wasn't crazy about Nathan's dad being back on board for the long haul. Not that he had particularly disliked Garland, as cops went -- _scary_ old cops -- but there was something not very zen about dragging the dead back out like a commodity. He'd loved Evi, he'd loved the chance to see her again, but it was an ache in his heart, now, a wound re-opened, and he knew that she was _gone_.

It felt vaguely wrong when recording Ray McBreen's music actually _worked_... and, wow, Nathan now had a digital voice recorder that could raise the dead. That was strange even for Haven.

Nathan came striding out of the hospital room the second time -- having left while Ray actually played -- clutching the digital recorder, with Garland bitching on his heels. "--time did you waste? You think I ain't gonna notice? I'm dead, not stupid."

"We got talking to Vince," Nathan said, and Duke knew too well that sigh in his voice, exasperation in it but also defeat.

"Right. Our conversation got interrupted. I need to--"

"And a meeting overran. You remember those?"

"Remember bein' able to exercise some _control_ over the crap people tried to take up my time with."

"We're in a town crisis! _If_ you hadn't noticed!"

Wuornos glared at Wuornos, Nathan's hands splayed in the air over Garland's head, but his extra height only gave him the illusion of an advantage.

Really, Duke couldn't be expected to hold back his grin. Not when it was like a comedy double act.

Garland turned the scowl onto him, breaking the stalemate. "Crocker." His eyes ticked back to Nathan. "You _know_ about him, right? You weren't, I don't know, head-boozled somehow and forgot?" Garland waved a hand around in a 'crazy' gesture next to his ear. "He's the one who--"

"Yeah, I know," Nathan said, with exaggerated patience. "One girl in every generation Chosen to fight the vampires. We _know_ about Duke's Trouble. It's under control. It's not a problem."

Duke almost snorted the lining of his throat. "Gaah! You just made a Buffy reference! Nate!!" He didn't know if he was proud or terrified. Either way, it was definitely Audrey's choice of nostalgic viewing that was to blame. 

"Really?" Garland pretty much ignored it. "Because Simon didn't do so hot with 'control'."

"I'm _right here_ ," Duke objected.

Nathan barely cast him a glance, Garland didn't even bother with that. "Duke's not Simon."

"No, Simon started out alright. _Duke_ was always a layabout and a criminal. He's--"

"Do not say it," Nathan snapped, pretty much losing his rag. "You haven't _been_ here, you haven't seen how he's helped."

Even coming as that did mid-flow of the argument, Duke still felt a small touch of the warm-and-fuzzies.

Garland gave a snort that made it disgustingly clear there was some serious mucous action being put into it. "Helped at killing folks. Yeah, I know how that one goes."

Unpleasantness clutched at Duke's belly with the accusation. The look on Nathan's face steadied him. Except they'd barely made it down the one corridor and Duke was starting to be seriously concerned about a father-son fist fight in the _hospital_. 

"Okay, okay." He lifted his hands and backed a few steps away from them both. "Should I go... do my own thing again? Leave the two of you to catch up? Again. Because I can do that."

"Duke," Nathan said tightly. "Stay."

"Aw." Garland flapped his hand dismissively. Decisively. "Might as well stay. I'm outta here. Things to do, people to see. Wouldn't want to bargain on how long I've got." He glared at Nathan, jabbing a finger back toward the digital recorder in his hand. "You remember to listen to that thing. Set up a beep on your damn phone or something. I don't want to get kicked out of living when I'm in the middle of something important."

Garland trotted off while Nathan stood, closed-mouthed and angry, watching him go. He stayed like that until his dad was out of sight. Then he collapsed into one of a row of three chairs against the corridor wall, all his limbs going loose, and let out a long groan. He folded himself over and stared at the floor through his knees.

"In all fairness," Duke pointed out, "this was pretty much how you got along with him while he was alive." He added, "I could say something profound about our tendency to idealize the dead."

"Please don't," Nathan grunted. "I'm still waiting for the penny to drop when he finds out about the two of you. _Vince_ knows. It's not going to stay secret."

"Yeah. Funny how that works," Duke mused sourly, "when they're _so good_ at keeping their own secrets."

"I don't know who he'll be madder about."

"I'm... guessing me?"

"He didn't _warn me off_ a relationship with _you_."

Duke blinked. Okay, well, probably that was just because Garland in his wildest, weirdest and worst dreams would never have contemplated such a possibility. 

"He seems pretty fixed on what he's doing," Duke said, trying to be reasonable. "Maybe he won't notice."

***

It had been one of the most fruitless days of Audrey's memory. All right, the dead had walked in Haven, but it was _at least_ the third time that had happened now, and it wasn't as novel as it used to be. She had plenty ofconcerns about Garland's efforts to impose himself back upon Nathan's life, or more to the point, upon _Haven_... It seemed to her sometimes that, much as the old Police Chief had indisputably loved his adopted son, it had been the thought of a successor to leave his beloved town that he'd loved more than anything else. 

She was even more concerned that Nathan appeared to have gone off and _recorded_ Ray McBreen's Trouble. This, she felt fairly sure, was not going to end well.

Her efforts for the day hadn't ended well. She hadn't been able to charge the nurse, unable to find anyone to corroborate her being at the mass kidnappings, unable to base much on an ambiguous slip of the tongue that the woman had since redacted.

It was, frankly, Audrey's personal quest to nail each and every one of the assholes who'd involved themselves in that affair and then faded anonymously back into the population, such honest, good-standing church-goers. They'd tried to make Duke a murderer, close to _succeeded_ with Hopkins in Duke's mind. They'd tried to make him _kill Nathan_ , and besides that, they'd kidnapped and been prepared to slaughter a whole bunch of people who were _like_ Nathan. They were all good as murderers in her eyes, and they all belonged behind bars, and the frustration of being so close to and then losing another one of them was considerable.

Didn't help that the appointment in Bangor was tomorrow.

She shouldn't be going, she thought. She didn't have _time_ to go. Tomorrow--

\--There'd be another Trouble, and they'd get caught up in it, more likely than not, and if she _just kept quiet_ then Duke and Nathan were less likely to make a point of remembering, when the shit hit the fan in its usual Haven way, and insist that they abandon a Trouble to the care of Dwight and the Guard because of her stupid appointment.

So yeah. Not mentioning the appointment.

They met together back at the police station for the end of the day. Duke was emanating boredom in Nathan's office, flicking paper balls. Nathan didn't feel the small impacts against his head, where it was bended down over paperwork, but he looked around in puzzlement each time he heard the deflected missile land elsewhere, and then glanced mistrustfully at Duke. Audrey watched for a minute through the glass, and a smile had crept onto her face in spite of herself by the time she pushed the door open and went in. 

"Good day?" she asked.

Nathan chewed the end of his pen. "Depends how loose your definitions are."

"Garland wants his job back," Duke put in.

"Yeah. I need to talk to you about that." Audrey had only had a chance to catch the abridged highlights of the Garland situation so far. "We're not letting that happen, right?"

"What? No," Nathan said defensively. "He knows it's not going to last. Give me ten minutes and I've got this finished." He pressed his nose back down to his papers.

Duke rolled his eyes at Audrey over the top of Nathan's head, then gestured with two open arms. They should have been finished half an hour ago, so Audrey found no compulsion to abide by Nathan's office rules and not get frisky in the workplace as she went to Duke and stood on her tiptoes to plant a kiss. He seized her lips, and then her ass, and hell, they had about ten minutes to waste while Nathan screwed about, so she just kind of went with it. It was _just about_ short of a full sex act in the office.

Nathan cleared his throat an undetermined amount of time later and then said, " _Okay_ ," a couple of times, sharply, until they broke apart. Despite the disapproval in his voice, his eyes were light, and Duke said, "Ignore the hypocrite, he's the one who got us walked in on by Vince earlier."

Audrey squashed a laugh. "Why, _Chief Wuornos_..."

Today, Nathan winced a bit at the name. He set his work aside with a heavy sound, saturated with determined finality, and stood up. "Okay. Let's go home."

"Amen," said Duke.

Nathan got out an MP3 player and a pair of in-ear headphones, and after a briefly apologetic glance, stuck it in his ears and pressed play, then after a few seconds, stopped it and put it all away again. He glowered a silent, annoyed defence at Duke and Audrey's matching judging looks before he got annoyed enough to break out actual words. " _What_? He wants to catch up with Vince and Dave and some of the other old goats... They're all at Jerry Bodie's tonight, up in the woods. I can do that much for him."

"Campfires, whiskey, shooting their supper..." Duke rolled out.

"It's not an unreasonable request," Nathan said.

"If you say so," Audrey sighed.

"I've stuck it on a two hour loop of silence," Nathan said, "so I can wear it in bed tonight."

"Tomorrow, I am going to have a talk with Garland," Audrey promised.

" _Tomorrow_ is your doctor's appointment," Nathan pointed out, and Audrey bit her lip.

But they went home, and Duke cooked, and no Troubles ruined the evening, so that was a win. They managed to have a decent time, so long as Audrey ignored the undercurrent of apprehension and unease that seemed to thrum beneath her skin.

She didn't want to go to the appointment.

Duke and Nathan were oddly conspiratorial. She caught odd whispered words when they'd steal moments with each other in corners, or when they met in transit from one side of the room to another, brushing close, Duke walking past the couch where Nathan was sprawled out, his back bowing and lips lowering to deliver a kiss and a secret to Nathan's ear.

"...going to have to tell her," she caught at one point, with its hissed reply from Nathan of, " _Not tonight_."

They could have their conspiracies. Whatever they were planning, she had no intention of going to that appointment tomorrow, and Haven... Haven would oblige. _As it always did_.

They made love with no less passion for the whispers. She guessed, actually, that Duke was tired of the conspiracy shit, too, because he started by rolling Nathan face-down underneath him where Nathan couldn't _see_ what their bodies did, and teasing him with more whispered words -- lewd, obnoxious, erotic words -- and his own sensory deprivation. Audrey went from laughing helplessly to watching fixedly, her own breathing caught up and harsh in echo of the mens' quickening rhythms, her body aroused, as she watched Nathan get turned on and heated up until he came in spite of his situation. He was a lot more amenable to _play_ within the context of his Trouble than he'd used to be, since Malcove's Trouble proved to him how much he still had to work with in a real _living_ body of flesh and blood, even if it was one that couldn't feel.

When they'd finished their game, the two of them turned their attentions to Audrey with a will. Trying to make her forget whatever they planned for tomorrow, no doubt, she thought, cynically.

But she lay back and let them.

***


	3. PART 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The usual apologies for any Science harmed in the making of this fic. I tried to align the explanation of Audrey's injury with current thought upon the workings of the brain insofar as I could determine from a sea of vague and unhelpfully contradictory articles _what that was_. Although, all things considered, Audrey _has_ to be a special case anyway.

**PART 2**

Lately, the darkness always had a face in it. One face, but recurring endlessly.

It was _her own face_. Not twisted, not scary, but different. The eyes that were looking out from it weren't her eyes, weren't anything like her eyes. And that was _terrifying_.

Audrey had waited so long to find out _who_ she really was.

_She is walking down the street and the face of the stranger within leers off every window, every car's polished bodywork, every reflective surface._

...Variations on the same theme every night, to the point where she was starting to jump at her own reflection when she was awake.

Before Malcove's Trouble, she had been starting to remember Lucy. Lucy had come with headaches and odd dreams, warnings from the man she'd come to know as Agent Howard. She hadn't told Duke and Nathan, she'd told Claire... who was dead now. She _wished_ she could talk to Claire and not some stranger about the emptiness and oddness and sense of _loss_ inside of her head. About forgetting Lucy, post-Malcove, when she'd had that sense Lucy was just on the tip of her mind, before. She still knew the things she'd already remembered, but only from the... the memory of remembering them. When she reached down into where that familiar well of memory ought to be, the resource that had been _Lucy's_ little knot of presence inside her head, there was no longer anything there.

Like her ability to play the piano, which had flowed instinctively from her fingers, and was now gone.

She rolled over in the darkness, her knee brushing against Duke's ass, his hair trailing over her arm. After Malcove, he'd succumbed to her offhand post-coital urging to grow it longer, or perhaps that was just the other Duke asserting himself. Both men had their own echoes of other lives, now. He didn't stir as she pressed herself into the back of his shoulder. Nathan was breathing loudly on the other side of Duke, dead-tired after his early morning and long day.

Goddamn it, she was _going_ to get some sleep tonight, and not be ratty and irritable with them both while she... avoided her appointment, tomorrow.

She shut her eyes and pressed her arms around Duke like a teddy bear.

Sometimes the dreams got much worse.

" _This body is mine." Hollow footsteps herald the appearance of not just a face looming out of the darkness, but a whole Audrey_. _This Audrey is the crux, more complete than the rest, the disembodied fragments of which are like roadkill, this time, strewn around her mind._

 _"Did you kill them?" Audrey asks, and even though she knows that in the real world she's lying sleeping in this body and it's_ hers _, in the dream she's cut off-mid chest, a floating head and arms, no more complete than any of the others. Half a thing, unreal, incomplete._

 _The face of the whole Audrey distorts in rage, eyebrows pressing down, eyes filling with hate... or more thoroughly letting out the abundance of hate that they were windows for from the start. "Did_ I _kill them_? You _killed us! And for what?"_

Audrey has no legs to outrun her and can only flail back with her arms as the other woman tears into her. "Stop! Stop! I didn't do this on purpose--!"

Audrey jerked out of the dream, breathing heavily, crying tears into Duke's hair.

"Just a nightmare," she mumbled over her sleeping lovers.

But she didn't think it was a nightmare. She had other people inside her head, and they were _angry_.

That one wholler, stronger doppelganger, who _was_ she? This terror she felt, the way her heart rate spiked and sweat broke out on her skin whenever she touched the presence of the other within, was this a product of the physical damage, or of _who that person was_?

All along, she'd wanted so badly to know who she was, beneath the memories of the Audrey Parker she knew was another person entirely, the memories she knew were false. But _this_ presence was insidious and spiteful and even... though she was not even sure she believe in the concept of it... _evil_.

"She can't hurt me," she whispered into the dark. "It's only a dream. Whatever she is, she's only in my unconscious, and she says she's dying."

Not a comfort: Audrey did not want a corpse in her head. 

Let alone dozens.

"I didn't kill them," she hissed at the presence inside, willing it to _listen_. "Lock killed them. The _fall_ killed them."

She pressed her lips closed. Duke and Nathan didn't stir. The illuminated letters on Duke's alarm clock said it was 3:44am. 

"I'm going back to sleep now. Leave me _alone_."

 _The corpses she's surrounded by this time are far less abstract. She too has a body, naked like all of the strewn dead ones, the exact_ mirror _of all the strewn dead ones. The only thing that differs is the hair. She knows Lucy as much by the scar on her foot, though; the others don't have that._

_Except maybe one. The malevolent presence always looks however Audrey looks now. Five days ago she had her hair fixed, and the entity that haunts her dreams changed hers, too._

_Audrey steps barefooted through the sea of identical corpses. Lucy's grabs her ankle and looks up at her with dead eyes and says, "I thought you were going to remember me."_

_She pulls her ankle away, shaking. "I'm sorry. But I've_ met _Lucy Ripley. She's still alive and well."_

_Not much of a defence. What is she, if you take out the memories of Audrey Parker, which she knows aren't real?_

_"There must be someone in there," Duke said, when she'd asked him, posing it as a theoretical one day at breakfast. When it came to theories of life and death and the nature of the universe, she asked Duke, because Nathan always just told her what he thought she wanted to hear. "We met her in Malcove's world, when she didn't _have_ Audrey Parker's memories. And she was you. She was exactly the same as you."_

_That's the one thing she clings to. She is not one of these dead and discarded things, but_ herself _even without the memories that were put into her to make her so._

_The corpse field is still very, very unsettling._

_She could count them all and commit them to memory, trace them back through the new information from the Teagues. If her unconscious is going to throw horrors at her, Audrey thinks, she might as well make use of them._

_As if her decision prompts them to action, the bodies start to rise around her._

_It's not some zombie apocalypse or horror cliche. It's worse. They were people. In their eyes, they're still people, still_ her _through distorted glass. Broken, in need, desperate, betrayed..._

_Audrey's mind blanks as their grabbing hands reach for her. Is this the truth of death, or is it Garland, cracking gruff jokes and rearranging Nathan's life again because he can?_

_Audrey shuts her eyes in the dream and tells herself to_ wake up _, but when she opens her eyes she's still there, and the trick that's worked before is apparently refusing to work now._

_"That body is mine." The woman with Audrey's features and the terrifying eyes stalks through the grasping past identities. She shoves them aside like they're nothing, until she can reach through them to Audrey's shoulders. "You stole it!"_

_Her nails dig into the skin and Audrey screams as they tear down in strips, peeling her back to an open wound. She fights, but the doppelganger gets its claws in again and tears off more strips. The pain weakens her and makes it even harder to fight while her alternate strips her down._

_"Why are you screaming?!" the woman demands, screaming back in her face. "Useless! This is useless! There's nothing there I can use!"_

_Audrey looks down through tears of agony and sees, in place of the torn-off skin, not exposed flesh and muscle fibre, but just... vacancy. She can see straight through her chest to the floor. The woman with her face has excavated down through the outer layer of Audrey Parker, but there's nothing underneath._

_"You're useless to me! I can't wear that!" The ghoul shoves Audrey as she shouts the accusation._

... _Lucy grabs her ankle from the floor._

 _There's not much left in Lucy. She's slack and boneless, mostly dead, no anima in her expression. She was_ always _nothing more than a shell. Nothing more than Audrey is. Yet she made a decision, and clings to the ghoul-Audrey's leg and starts trying to climb up it, hampering her, staggering her, almost pulling her down_.

_Audrey looks down at herself again and this time sees the strips of skin starting to curl back in over the void, and she gasps... The gaps are filling with the ghost of flesh again. That's not necessarily a good thing. The agony returns as her body reforms, because being alive hurts._

_"They're not nothing," Audrey grits, stepping back, looking at her mirror image. "I'm not, either! I think they were already mostly dead. I think the one who's been destroying what's left of them is_ you _. Who are you?!"_

 _In reply she gets laughter, raucous, disjointed, cruel... and filled with despair. "Me? I'm the only thing in your head that's real! But not for much longer. You're brain dead._ Brain dead _, you do-gooding, Trouble-solving little fool. You're a nothing! Without me you're nothing!"_

_Chills sweep Audrey, replacing the sensation of pain. She looks down again and her body... or facsimile of one... is complete again._

"Who. Are. You?" _she asks again, determinedly gritting each word, because the scene is starting to swim in and out and she thinks she's losing hold of the dream. Or it's losing its hold upon her._

"Mara," _spits the other Audrey, in rage. "Our name is_ Mara. _You might as well know, since you're my funeral."_

***

"Nathan!" Something was rocking him fiercely enough that he might fall out of bed. Was the _Cape Rouge_ in a storm? Nathan blinked his eyes open. "Nathan!"

"Duke--"

It seemed as soon as he was awake, Duke's rough hands and insistent voice had no attention for him. Duke had turned back to Audrey, on the other side of the bed. 

Audrey, sitting up with something in her face, in her eyes, that wasn't like _Audrey_ at all.

Instantly, Nathan was wide awake and shooting bolt upright next to Duke, yanking the earphones from his ears. Not again--

"I suppose I have to at least commend that bitch's _physical_ taste -- and appetite -- in claiming two such specimens," 'Audrey' sneered at them, her eyes sliding over their naked bodies like a stranger's lewd inspection. Her finger lifted, pointing, hovering between them. Her bare thighs straddled the bed, more aggressive than suggestive. "But _you_..." Her finger settled on Nathan. "What a _boring_ little gift you have. What a miserable, failed experiment."

Nathan stared back at her, down the length of the finger. He searched her eyes for the Audrey he knew, but there was nothing of her in there. "Audrey...?"

" _No_. And _you_." Her hand whipped across to Duke. "An unexpected mutation? A happy accident for the town elders to utilize? Or... are you even one of _mine_? I don't recognise that!Though... yes, indeed I can see where _you_ might have your uses."

"Why...?" Duke was visibly shaken, floundering, and when he came up, what he asked was, "Why is Nathan a failure?" He ignored the part about himself.

'Audrey's' face screwed up. She leaned in close and hissed in Nathan's face, " _It was supposed to make you_ stronger."

Nathan blinked, and then, as Audrey's eyes turned vacant and rolled back, as her eyelids slid closed and her body slumped, he caught her.

He checked the pulse of the one person in the world whose pulse he could check. "She's alright... It's like last time... She's just sleeping now." He did a double-take as she started to snore softly. 

"Asleep," Duke confirmed wryly. "It's almost 6AM. Wake her up."

Nathan sighed and didn't argue. They had to do this sometime, and it had been blatantly obvious that Audrey was intending to find a reason to duck out on the appointment today. She had to know there were good reasons that she _could not_. They needed to tell her what had just occurred.

Last time... could have been nothing. A blip, a dream, a product of a sleep disorder. Sleep-talking, sleep-walking, something like that. Maybe that could happen after a bang on the head? But this had been someone else wearing Audrey's skin. Talking to them _intelligently_. About relevant things, information that apparently Audrey herself did not know.

Nathan rubbed her face gently. "Wake up, love... Audrey... wake up."

He wasn't expecting her eyes to open misted with tears and hazy with pain, but when they _were_ he was glad he'd woken her.

They greeted the morning sitting on Duke's deck with a spectacular sunrise. It was edging into winter now, but Audrey said the bite of the morning's temperature was welcome, and it had been Duke's idea when he'd done a check outside and seen the view.

"She said her name was _Mara_. My name... is Mara," Audrey said, whose narration of her dream had overtaken their own intentions.

"Your name is _Audrey_ ," Nathan said.

Audrey shook her head. "Whatever this entity inside my head is, _that's_ the original me. The person I always wanted to know more about, to reclaim, to _be_ again."

Duke shook his head far more emphatically. Nathan hadn't altogether been expecting the support. "Your name is Audrey. That's all you need to know."

They exchanged a look, acknowledging their position on the same page. The person they had spoken to had been anything but benign. Audrey's dream had definitely not been benign. 

"I'm absolutely sure you don't want to be this person," Duke asserted. "You're _you_ , and we love you, and that is all you need to be... Sunshine." Duke leaned over and kissed her hair, and pointed her gaze at the sunrise. "That's you. You're _my_ sun. Pretty sure you're Nathan's." He straightened, but kept stroking the back of her neck. Audrey curled her hand around his wrist.

"Thanks, but she says she's dying, anyway." Audrey's eyes glittered with more tears at that admission, though she blinked hard and didn't shed them. "I think... _she's_ the thing that the Barn is tied to. She said... she said I'm _brain dead_." A helpless laugh for the absurdity of the statement escaped her. "I know. I'm sitting here talking to you, right? Yet the doctor who read the scan results said... He _said_ the damage looked far more extensive on the scan than the level of function I was displaying."

"We will find another way," Nathan said. "We don't need the Barn. We will find another way _and_ you'll get to stay with us." He knelt down by her knees, placed his hand on one. She put the other hand on his head. He could feel the trace of contact through his hair to his scalp. Not quite touch, but to a certain degree he could feel the _pressure_ because it was her hand doing it.

Duke cleared his throat.

Audrey stilled and looked at him. "Okay, what is it? Because I _know_ you guys were getting weird before I even told you about my dream. Was I... screaming in my sleep, or something?" She laughed uncomfortably, dismissing it, but Nathan knew then that she'd been screaming in her _dream_ , and his heart clenched. 

"She's... not good," he rasped. "The one in your head. I don't think she's a good person. She isn't like you."

Audrey stared.

Duke sighed. "We spoke to her, Audrey. She was... I woke up, and she was _there_ , in _your_ body, sitting up in our bed and spouting... well, various accusations I won't go into. But after I woke Nathan up, she talked to us about our Troubles. It sounded like she knew about Nathan's Trouble of old, and _it_ and all the rest of the Troubles were inflicted _deliberately_ , maybe even by her."

Nathan blinked. The words he'd heard, when he replayed them, did indeed suggest that possibility. It hadn't been what he was focused on at the time.

"She was _in control_?" Audrey demanded, her face wounded and astonished and _annoyed_. "Not just in my dream? She was _here_? You spoke to her?"

"She says you've got good taste. Which is obvious."

Audrey glared. "Tell me. Tell me what she actually said, word for word."

When they'd done that, Audrey sat and gulped at her coffee silently, pushing both their hands away when they tried to offer comfort. Nathan took himself over to the side of the ship, staring at the sunrise reflecting on the water, wondering how any of these answers could be true. Vince had told her, _them_ , that she was always the same person glowing out from within, no matter whose name she wore. How could that be the bitter, vicious person who'd so blithely catalogued himself and Duke as nothing more than their Troubles, less than an hour before, in their own bed?

"It happened in the dream," Audrey said, suddenly, her voice a little rough as she broke the silence. "When she took the body. But... she said there was nothing there for her. Because she's dying. She couldn't keep control. I took it _back_. I don't think there's any danger of her taking over, guys."

"No," Duke said slowly. "But... we really think that you need to come to this appointment today."

Nathan quickly moved back to them, taking her hand again, relieved and grateful when she reached for him even as he was reaching out to her. She hugged his hand in her lap. "It could tell us what to expect, what to look out for, if Frank can tell us what's physically happened... happening.. inside your brain. And..." Nathan coughed. "He's encountered the Troubles before. I think he always knew there was nothing _physically_ wrong with me."

"Okay," Audrey said with a sigh. "Point taken. But we had better check everything's all right at the station before we go. You _know_ there's going to be a Trouble lined up for today."

***

Garland was at the police station, behind Nathan's desk. The two police chiefs raged at each other while Audrey clamped her nails hard into Duke's arm against his offer to go fetch popcorn. 

"You _said_ you weren't going to do this!" Nathan yelled. He could hit quite a volume when he felt like it. "This is my desk now, you _said_ you wanted that! You're -- you're dead! You can't just come back and take up where you left off! You said you understood!"

"Turns out I'm 'lost at sea' -- yeah, Dave told me that. I guess that means I can get 'found' any time I please." Garland let his confrontational pose last an extra second before he dropped it. " _Shit_ , kid, I'm just gonna do this today. Heard you had business out of town and, well, Haven needs someone to be on this. Since I'm back here right now it might as well be me. How 'bout you scoot and take your day off. So I'm back. Well, later you can tell everyone I was living it up on tropical shores with memory loss and went and retired back there again after my visit. Hawaii, maybe, like that other fellow."

"Hawaii," Nathan repeated blankly, subdued by the misstep, and Duke couldn't help but suspect that had been Garland's intention. 

"They know how to fish and they know how to drink, and that sounds good to me. They got earth tremors already, right?"

"They're got volcanoes."

"Nathan," Duke said, pointedly. "Let's _go_." Because they could not afford to get caught up in some epic Wuornos discussion about Garland's imaginary retirement while Garland ran rings round Nathan the way he could because he'd been doing it since Nathan was _five_. Garland screwing with them was also a discussion that needed to be had, but perhaps with Nathan in private first. 

"Come on," Audrey added. "Hell, if we have to take a day off, at least this way we have cover." 

Duke supposed the difference between them was that Audrey had actually liked and worked with the old Chief, whereas Duke viewed him _mostly_ through the lens of the relationship between prey and its predator. Garland had been busting him for one thing or another almost as long as he'd been managing Nathan.

"We've got _Dwight_ ," Nathan said through grit teeth. "Dwight is perfectly adequate back-up."

"Dwight, yep." Garland ticked that off on his fingers and scrubbed himself a note. "Need to touch base with Dwight."

"Nathan..." Duke intoned with steadily more desperation.

Nathan looked back and then tore himself away, his movements quick and angry. He stormed out of the room ahead of Duke and Audrey, leaving them to catch up.

"Bye," Duke said blandly, and Audrey managed to inject more civility into her own farewell as they took off at a half-run to catch up with Nathan.

"I'm being... I'm being goddamned _usurped_ by my father's ghost," Nathan growled, gesturing angrily with both hands and finally dragging them down next to his sides, clenched tightly into fists.

"We will deal with Garland later," Audrey said.

"He's not going to _need_ long to re-establish his power base. It'll be like trying to oust a monarch!"

"Nathan," Duke said. "This is important, too, remember. You were the one emphasizing how important this was, before... well. Garland."

"You can also _stop listening to the recording_ ," Audrey said. "Nathan, the control of this situation is entirely with you."

Nathan's face wiped blank, and when he recovered, he acted like Audrey had never spoken and turned to Duke. "Of course it's important. I'm sorry." He looked back to Audrey, who rolled her eyes but said nothing more on the subject. Not even when Nathan was plugging his earphones back in and pressing 'play' _on the way back out to the car_.

They were travelling in Nathan's Bronco, though Duke was kind of wishing now that they'd brought his own truck, since he seemed to be the only one of them today who was on anything like a level emotional keel. Still, Nathan's driving tended to be boring-ass old lady driving even when he was riled up, and today proved no exception.

Audrey opted to sit with Duke in the back, leaving Nathan alone up front. "I hate this," she said. "But I'm tired and I _might_ fall asleep, and if I do, I don't want the person driving the vehicle to be the one sat next to psycho-Mara."

"Thanks for that," Duke said. "Nominated to restrain the psycho. Check."

"Plus, _you_ I can use for a pillow," she added.

"It's happened once, maybe twice," Duke said. They'd told her about the other time, the one they'd been sufficiently uncertain about to waver on telling her before. After all, there'd barely been any dialogue, and it had only been a few seconds that time, even if both men had had an instinctive recoil from her and sense of _not Audrey_ that was made stronger, in retrospect, by the more alarming and complete instance. "I'm sure there's not a big chance of it happening again."

"Better safe than sorry." She hunched herself up small, drawing her legs up, and chewed on her finger. On the one hand it looked adorable, but on the other, it looked _uncertain_ , and Duke was not used to that. In fact, on some level, the thought of Audrey Parker uncertain was freakin' terrifying.

The Troubles were unravelling, the cycle was broken, and Audrey thought it was down to the broken contents of her head. Duke couldn't dispute the theory, not really. She was at the centre of this, of whatever the Troubles _were_ , and always had been. He was still getting to grips with the terrifying fact of there not being an _end_ to it, especially in context of his own damn Trouble.

Couldn't clear out of town at the prospect of the Crocker Curse becoming an essential commodity, either. Audrey wasn't leaving, Nathan wasn't leaving, and he was... stuck with them. Part and parcel.

A treacherous little core of him _wanted_ Garland back in charge, _wanted_ Audrey so disheartened she might be persuaded to walk away, _wanted_ to engineer a situation where he could drag them both far away with him. But his rational brain knew it would break both of them, and he'd rather break his own heart and body and mind on the Crocker Curse than allow that.

"C'mere..." He jogged his hand at Audrey, who cast him a sceptical look. "Well, Nathan's driving, so I guess we will be inviting the usual bitching about seat belts, but it's a long journey."

"I said I might sleep, I don't _want_ to sleep," she said, head shaking. 

"You didn't get much last night," Duke reasoned, "and I am _right here_ , and I promise, if I see any sign of disturbance, or the nightmares, I will wake you. On the instant."

She waggled a finger at him, a sharp recall for a moment to 'Mara', but they hadn't mentioned the tic of body language. "I am _way_ too keyed up to sleep, but I _will_ snuggle. Nathan, not a word about seatbelts." She unhooked hers and drew her legs up, shuffling across the back of the Bronco, draping her shoulders against Duke's side.

Five minutes later, she was miles away, and they were _not_ so many miles away as they should be if they wanted to get to this appointment. "Can you speed it up a bit?" Duke asked, kicking the back of Nathan's seat. "You still drive like Granny Shaw." Wasn't surprising, since Nathan had had such a huge spat with his dad back when he'd first got the Bronco that it had been Bill Shaw's grandma that _taught him_. 

Come to think of it, Nathan's whole history seemed to have been composed of arguments with his dad. Duke kind of wondered, as the car speeded up, and Nathan lifted a hand from the wheel to flip him off, how anyone had thought that would _change_ as a result of Garland coming back from the dead.

Nathan switched on the radio after a while, some country and western station that resulted in a few Soggy Bottom Boys style renditions of whatever howling tune was the DJ's pick as both of them fell back into the old rhythm. Nathan had a good voice, though God forbid he bring it out under any normal circumstances, when he wasn't doing his best to make a sound like cats.

"Duke," Nathan's voice intruded on Duke's consciousness a while later. " _Duke_!" His voice was sharper, and the car lurched as he deliberately slewed it side to side.

"Gyah...! What?" Duke flailed out his arms and just about managed not to knock Audrey off his lap.

"You can't wake her up if you're sleeping. Besides, you _know_ you're supposed to be the designated entertainment."

"She's fine." Duke stroked Audrey's hair back, confirming the words. "Maybe this Mara only comes out at night?"

***

_Lucy takes her hand and they both stand over the wreckage of a piano like they're at a funeral. There's nothing under their feet and the piano hangs held by nothing in a dark void. Lucy is voiceless, dark eyes hollow, face pale, skin transparent. Her lips part but nothing comes out. Her eighties clothes look more faded than ever._

_Audrey, who still has a voice, uses it to say, "I can learn to play. I already have the piano. I can learn to play it again."_

_She clasps Lucy's hand hard in both of hers and receives a phantom smile..._

"Audrey." That was Duke's voice.

"No," she said, protesting too late. It wasn't one of the bad dreams... at least, not like that.

"We're here," Duke's voice said.

But it _was_ too late, and Audrey was pretty sure that, in any case now, Lucy was gone. Lucy was gone but at least she had a way to honour and resurrect her, in a small part. "...I need to take piano lessons," she murmured.

"But you can play the piano," Duke protested.

"No," she said, feeling faintly weird about admitting it at last. "I _can't_."

She didn't explain, but Nathan said, "Ellie Inghams from the pottery class plays piano. I can ask her." Nathan was pulling the Bronco into the lot in front of a bland, flat-roofed building which seemed to have more grassy verges between the parking spaces than it had parking spaces. Audrey wondered again what this appointment was costing them. All Nathan had ever told her when she asked was not to worry.

An hour later, she was sitting in a waiting room -- yet again -- and ready to kill whoever next dared say the words 'another test'.

Dr Abernathy ventured back out of his room with his brow scored with a 'V' of perplexity beneath his curly white head of hair. He nodded absently at Nathan, who was studying a decorative oriental plant over in the corner, and frowned at Duke where he was poking at the vending machine. (He affected an innocent expression, but Audrey _knew_ he hadn't had any change on him, and Nathan didn't after Garland's candy-spree yesterday, but Duke had had or handed over at least four candy bars that she'd seen.) Dr Abernathy ambled over to Audrey. "You, my dear, are an extraordinarily fortunate young woman."

She blinked back at him and said, with a certain degree of threat, " _What_?"

He wafted a hand at the door. "We should -- Are Nathan and Mr Crocker coming along? Yes?" He looked to her for confirmation. "Very well." He stood back and kept waving for them until they all trooped into the indicated room ahead of him.

Nathan _assured_ her that this guy was not so ineffectual as he looked. 

"She'll be... all right, won't she?" Nathan wavered at the door, hanging back with Abernathy for spoilers, and got tsked. But Audrey thought Nathan had already got what he wanted in everything about Abernathy's reaction to his question. His face was more relaxed as he came in and sat down, joining her and Duke on the big leather sofa. With Nathan holding her hand on one side, and Duke's hand on her leg on the other, she had to wonder what that looked like to the Doc. She didn't particularly give a shit if it looked like something he didn't like, though.

"Lucky," she said to Nathan. "Apparently, I'm lucky."

"Indeed!" Abernathy said exuberantly, recapturing all their attention. He fumbled with a scan from his desk, and attached it to a nearby board, then pointed with the end of a pen, affecting a manner that made Audrey feel like she was back in school. "This area of your brain... see how it's darkened, just here? This is the frontal lobe. It's somewhat of a myth to say that only certain areas of the brain perform particular functions or contain particular _parts_ of us, but it is at least believed to hold the majority of our formative experiences, our memories... and it performs numerous other functions besides. In your case, the damage it's taken appears to have rendered the area almost completely nonfunctioning..." He cast her a meaningful look. 

Duke choked, and then she had the full, startled attention of both of her men, their eyes filled with alarm.

Abernathy frowned at them before returning to her. "Audrey, my dear, your function tests, to all intents and purposes, are _normal_. In outward result, at least. However, when you access your memories under scan, the appearance is eccentric. Your long-term memory, and the rest of the functions we might expect to light up here in this damaged area, appear to exist in... well, in a number of scattered places around your brain. But not in this damaged place. You see?"

Audrey _stared_.

"She's abnormal?" Duke said blankly. "Abby Normal?" She punched his shoulder before he got any further with the _Young Frankenstein_ references.

"Now," Abernathy said, with a gleam in his bespectacled eyes. "The brain can be an odd place, and I cannot be absolutely sure which came first, the abnormal filing system, or the trauma and the subsequent work-around, but the continued existence of functional long-term memories strongly suggest the former. And based on what Nathan filled me in on, suggesting that, like himself, you may be a unique case, I do have a theory about that."

"It's--" Audrey almost choked the words off, not sure how to take all this in, even less sure how to _voice_ what she wanted to ask, the certainty that had solidified in her thoughts with the proof of his science. "It's someone else, isn't it? The part that was damaged is-- If I was given new memories, made into a new person at some point in the past, that original person had to be _put_ somewhere..."

Abernathy's chin lowered slowly, his eyes grave with sympathy. "I would suggest you're alone in your head now, Miss Parker."

For a moment it took her breath away. A gut-punch. Then she laughed bitterly. "I've never felt _less_ alone in my head. What about the nightmares?" She stopped. She hadn't told the doctor everything about those. "In my dreams, there's another woman who looks exactly like me. She keeps telling me I killed her. Duke and Nathan... last night they said she _took over_ my body, and spoke to them."

Abernathy's eyebrows raised, and if he hadn't clued into their non-standard relationship arrangements before, he certainly had now. He took it in his stride, though. "Death throes," he said succinctly. "The brain relies overwhelmingly on communication between cells, the transmission of proteins. There are still a few dying sparks. Perhaps in a dreaming state, they can still bridge the gaps, but they are isolated and vitally cut off from the rest of the brain otherwise."

"Death throes," Audrey repeated. "If it's not dead yet, then surely what's left can be saved?!"

Abernathy shook his head solemnly, not reacting in the least to her excitement. "I have consulted with my colleague Mr Edgebarton, and he agrees with my assessment. In the existence of anything _approaching_ normal function, to tamper with this miracle would be foolish beyond measure. I am sorry, but there is nothing to be done. If it is any consolation..." He smiled at her sadly. "I would suggest that your unfortunate mental twin saved your own function." 

He paced back and forth on his feet a few moments, before turning to them again with a frown. "I know that Nathan... excuse me, Nathan." A glance toward him elicited a nod and permission to go on, and Abernathy continued. "Nathan feels nothing for no physical or psychological reason that science has been able to determine, a condition inherited from a biological father whose records I successfully managed to access and study quite recently in our relationship. I am informed even more recently that this condition is not, in fact, truly a medical condition at all." He gave Nathan a very severe frown. "Who was she, Miss Parker? The woman in your head?"

Audrey shook her head slowly. "I don't know... That's the thing. I don't know, and now it seems I never will."

"We have proof that she's been multiple other people, with their own identities," Nathan said. "What about the other... layers... of those people? Aside from the original."

"Lucy's dead," Audrey murmured. "They're dying with Mara. They must go into storage, too, when the... personality overlay... when there's no longer... when it's replaced."

"Mara," Abernathy picked out brightly. "So, we have a name. Not everything is lost."

"I _need_ to save her," Audrey urged. "Wait, don't throw this out. _Listen_ to me. What if I need to _be_ this person, for something to happen that's really important to a lot of people? If I can't be her, then people are going to suffer, and maybe I can't help them as _me_. Could you... could you do it, under _those_ circumstances? Could you, or your colleague, try surgery or _something_ ,to help save Mara?"

Abernathy shook his head. "At this stage, there could not be enough left to be worth saving. In the presence of visible function and stability, the prior hospital let you go. Too much time has passed now to contemplate trying any sort of... rescue. I would suggest, in any case, that all you're experiencing are echoes. Violent echoes, _terrifying_ echoes, by the sound of things, but echoes still."

Nathan squeezed her hand tighter. "The Barn already didn't come."

Audrey reinterpreted, _Too much was already gone_.

"You're more important than she is," he added.

"Not if she could stop the Troubles and I can't!" Audrey returned.

"The... Troubles? An interesting term for them," Abernathy said.

"You can stop the Troubles," Duke said. "One person at a time. Just like you've been doing. Until we find another way. The Barn is not your _fault_. Lock and Malcove throwing you off an airship _cannot_ be _your fault_. And I wouldn't trust Mara anyway. The woman looked at us like we were science projects. You're the improved version. The Barn was a shitty solution, anyway, based on sacrifice and _dickishness_. Just like the damn Crocker Curse." 

"...That would be yours, then. I see." Abernathy reclaimed his scan from the board and puttered around at his desk for a moment before he came back and sank into a chair opposite them all. "I would ask if I can write this up for science, study more comprehensively--" He chuckled as Nathan instantly pouted and Audrey began a startled protest, and Duke grimaced. "Yes, that was always Nathan's answer, before now."

"Before...? _Nathan_!" Audrey looked to him sharply.

He shrugged. "Didn't seem there was anything to lose. I offered to make myself available for Frank's tests. Look..." He shook his head, trying to dismiss the significance of it. "I probably should have done it anyway, before now. I _am_ a medical curiosity, after all." He cast Dr Abernathy an apologetic look. "And that's probably not going to change any time soon. I'm alright with that."

"He was _this_ high--" Abernathy sketched a height above the floor with his flattened palm. "Liked showing off by stabbing himself with pencils, and the like."

"Impressed everyone but my dad," Nathan murmured.

"Hm. I remember your father. Quite the character. I... hear he's dead now."

"Er, lost at sea," Nathan murmured, "technically. Though he's talking about retiring to Hawaii."

"It's complicated," Duke said.

"You come from an interesting town," Abernathy summed up. 

"You could probably pass it off as _interesting_ if you didn't stay for very long and you drank a lot," Duke agreed. 

Dr Abernathy looked back at Audrey. "Are you all right, Miss Parker? Do you need a drink of water?"

"Thanks." She wanted more the breather from his sharp gaze that sending him to fetch it provided.

"I realise it may be disheartening from a certain perspective," he said, as he handed her the glass. Up this close, beyond the light flare reflecting on his spectacles, under the grizzle and bumbling and age, he had the most penetrating eyes. How had she ever dismissed him as a silly, waffling old man? "But you really have dodged a bullet due to your unusual brain function. Even though it seems _some_ function was temporarily affected, the more global nature of your own long-term and autobiographical memory storage allowed for compensations that I think simply wouldn't have come online in a normal brain pattern." 

He shrugged and half turned his back, his attention seeming buried in the distant corners of the room, and dimensions beyond. "...As for this period of unsettlement, I think you'll be seeing positive changes within the next few days. We really are at about the end of it, I think. You are and will remain physically within normal parameters for everyday function, so far as I can tell. Though we should assuredly keep an eye on that. You can come back next week, when Nathan returns for his own test schedule." He sort of jolted back to reality to go scratch a note on the paperwork at his desk.

"He means you get to live," Nathan said, gruffly, the part pertinent to himself going over his head. That wouldn't be sentimental tears clouding his voice, would it? "You get to _live_ , Parker. I can live with that."

"So can I," said Duke.

The _question_ , Audrey thought grimly, not answering them, was, _Could Haven_?

***

Dr Abernathy, whatever his strengths, was categorically unable to rule out any more incidents like the one last night, as Audrey's brain sorted itself out into a new equilibrium, before the last flickers of all the people she _had been_ exhausted themselves and died for good.

"I want them," said Audrey, sitting in the back of the Bronco with Duke again. "I _want_ them. If it's the last chance we'll get for information from Mara or any of the others, I need to talk to them while I can. I need to sleep." She felt jittery and wired and far as could be from anything like sleep. "Maybe _you_ need to talk to her, if we can engineer things somehow for that to happen again. She seemed more forthcoming with the two of you."

"She _hurt_ you," Nathan protested tightly.

"I _don't care_ ," Audrey retorted. "She's the original. She has to know something. We need to know it, too!"

"Maybe it's just as well Garland came back and is set up in the Chief's office," Nathan said, "if we need to take more time out on this."

"Maybe," she said flatly.

Duke sat in the back and groaned at both of them. "Okay, we're _not_ letting the dead dictate our lives? Seriously? We can all agree that's a bad idea, right?"

He'd sat through the weird doctor's rundown, out of his element, perhaps, but he was pretty sure he'd got the gist. Parts of Audrey's brain were still dying. There was no bringing them back. But once it was over she'd just be Audrey, all the complications gone.

Sounded good to him. 

Duke had _met_ Mara, and he had a bad feeling where trying to get closer to her was concerned. Definitely he would be loath to embrace deliberately letting that bitch out. And Nathan _really_ needed to rein back the Garland situation before that went much further. He cursed aloud as he realised where that left them.

"Nate. You should probably go back to the station, deal with your, what are we calling it? Undead coup? Zombie pretendership? I can help Audrey."

Nathan responded with his best scowly twist of his eyebrows and crinkling forehead, coupled with the Wuornos _pout_. While Duke found the combo genuinely hard to resist, he was also pretty sure he had the right of it. 

"We'll all go, first," Audrey said. "Find out what's happening. I want a word with the Chief, too." She took out her phone. "It's half past two... it'll be almost four by the time we get back."

Nathan fumbled in his pocket. "Damn it... I forgot to turn my phone back on after we left the hospital."

No, but he'd remembered to listen to his headphones _twice_ while they'd been in there. 

When he switched his phone on, it immediately started to ring. Nathan, ever the responsible driver, put it on the dash and found a place to pull in before he answered it. "Yeah... What's going on, Laverne?"

Duke wasn't well-positioned to see his face while he listened to the answer: even less so when Audrey leaned forward through the gap between the seats. But he got the tone of Nathan's "Uhuh... Uhuh..." loud and clear before Nathan lowered the phone and turned around to tell both of them, "There's a situation. Ray McBreen's been kidnapped."

...And it was kind of _amazing_ how quickly Audrey Parker's personal crises got left by the wayside when there was a case to be had. Especially, apparently, this one. Also amazing how Nathan could put his foot down with so much more gusto when Crime! was waiting. It was sad, really, and Duke would feel far more free to indulge his sarcasm if it wasn't ninety-nine percent assured that this was all about _those_ particular people and _that_ particular shit again. 

"It's the _damn_ Rev! That woman, that woman _knew_ what Ray could do, knew it brought the bastard back, and I had to let her go. Now they're going to bring him back again! Out of our control!"

Frankly, it was more than a little scary being trapped in the back of Nathan's Bronco with that. Even Nathan shot a few concerned glances behind him, between muted, gruff interjections like, "The Chief's there, Parker. He'll have this. He knows the Rev of old."

"This is _not_ the Rev of old, and _you_ need to be there," Audrey shot back at him. Her raising her voice to Nathan, of all people, was unusual enough to be jarring. "You know what he's capable of. Garland only knows the one who hid behind his socialised church _front_."

"Parker, relax," Nathan groaned. "It's not going to degenerate so much in an hour. The Rev had years to spout his poison."

Audrey at least stopped ranting, but she sat and fidgeted until it was driving Duke mad. Duke did think she had a point -- Rev had never gone bonkers and tried to slaughter Troubled kids in front of a police audience before, and this _was_ the post-bonkers Rev, who'd been gunned down like a dog by Audrey Parker. The man was the definition of dangerous, and if Audrey was right about who had Ray, that was alarming on whole new levels.

"We just have to _hope_ Ray McBreen will have the sense not to tell them you recorded his Trouble," Audrey said to Nathan, tightly, _angrily_ , after a further few minutes of travel.

Nathan took an audible breath. "I hope he'll trust that we'll get him back, and keep it to himself." 

"After all, with his Trouble available on demand, they might decide they don't need him any more. I'm guessing that either goes well for him or _very badly_." Audrey winced. "Hopefully the Rev's people won't think to try recording it themselves. The absolute last thing we need is some semi-permanent set-up keeping that bastard out of the ground. Where he so very much deserves to be."

"It _could_ be some other bunch of guys that took McBreen," Duke tried. "I mean, I guess you don't steal a man who can bring back the dead without wanting him to bring back the dead, but that's a pretty keen motivation for _anyone_ that's lost someone they loved, if they found out what Ray could do."

Nathan's phone chirped an alarm and he stuck his earphones on again for a few moments before hauling them off and stuffing them away. The look Audrey directed at the back of his shoulders was hard as nails, but she kept her mouth shut for the moment.

They were driving back inside the boundaries of Haven now.

"Okay, we need to get on this," Audrey said. "Duke, you should probably be... elsewhere. There's no need to expose you to Ray's Trouble again, and absolutely not to the Rev."

"Peachy. I have a bunch of things to do back at the _Gull_ that I should have been doing this morning, so just... drop me off where I can get my truck." He paused. "Where are you guys coming back to later, since I guess there's... not much point in asking _when_...?"

Audrey had a funny sort of look on her face, one he didn't like, that stalled and slowed his words. "I am _this_ close--" She held up her pinched fingers "--to suggesting we put a police guard on you, given what the Rev's gameplan was _last time_."

Duke groaned. "You've got to be fucking kidding." He leaned forward in his seat to confirm that Nathan was sporting the biggest shit-eating grin Duke had seen on him in a while. "Oh, now, see what you've done? Look at that. What are you trying to do to me, Audrey?!"

"Could make it Stan," Nathan said, pulling back to a more sober demeanour fast, which meant _he_ was taking this as a serious threat, too. "Duke, you can cope with Stan."

"I've got my own protection, thanks." Duke waggled his head sarcastically.

"Yeah, but that's protection that adds up to headlines like 'local ne'er-do-well guns down innocent honest respectable churchgoers'," Audrey pointed out.

" _No_ ," Duke said. "Seriously, no! Look at it this way: I am going back to my restaurant. I am going to be working there, all evening, in public, until my _very own personal_ police protection show up to escort me home in handcuffs and... do dirty, dirty things to me."

"Are we doing those tonight?" Nathan asked.

"I'd settle for a discussion on whether we're doing the _Rouge_ or the _Gull_ tonight," Duke emphasized with a bit more force. 

"Boat's more defensible," Audrey said. 

"I was hoping you were planning to get him before we'd have to think about that," Duke accused. "So much for all the police posturing."

"Yeah, well, Haven PD isn't exactly a work-all-through-the-night kind of place, most of the time, and we've got about an hour of daylight left," Nathan said. "We'll try, okay?"

"Tell me you'll give up on the police escort thing. My reputation--"

"How can your reputation be anything but shot to pieces after spending the last five months fucking two cops?" Audrey demanded. "We will take you to the _Gull_. Where we will come back and pick you up later. And you will stay in public view at the _Gull_ , and get Tracey to stand guard when you use the _bathroom_... that woman's like a rottweiller... and be _careful_. You of all people have got to know how much danger the Rev and his followers represent, _especially_ to you."

Duke kept up the bitching out of a sense of duty as they drove him around, but he couldn't really argue with the point. There was a scared-sick heavy ball of cold in his stomach at the idea the Rev might come after him again, and this time find some way to make him do their dirty work of exterminating Troubles. He bit his lip on the thought that the surest way they had to force his cooperation was to threaten Nathan or Audrey.

Both of them were in their own sort of danger from the Rev's followers, and knew how careful they had to be. With a bit of luck, the Rev's people were the last in town to even know about the relationship. Okay, it wasn't _secret_ , but wasn't like it had been printed in the paper yet either... No doubt only a temporary oversight by the Teagues. Duke wasn't sure if the hardcore group still spoke to people like Jonas, who almost certainly knew but might actually keep their mouth shut _because_ they knew too well the bigoted contingent that made them vaguely embarrassed to be associated with their church, and what they would make of it. 

He waved off Nathan and Audrey outside the _Gull_ , then went about his evening like a man focused on absolutely anything but his own goddamn restaurant, fretting all the while, albeit not for his own skin -- and no, _especially_ not when it came to shortly after five o'clock and a bunch of HPD guys still in uniform tramped in and took a table by the door, stating that the Chief had told them to come have a drink on him after their hard day at work.

But nothing happened, nothing occurred to even jolt the cops, and apparently nothing happened with Audrey or Nathan, either, because Audrey phoned just after eight sounding frustrated and tired, to say they were heading back and would pick him up, and she'd love him forever if he made sure they had cooked food ready to go when they did.

***

Audrey still felt dog-tired, never mind the catch-up on sleep in the car earlier. Honestly, she wasn't sure if it was the Ray McBreen situation, or if the sleep she'd been getting just didn't have any value in terms of actual _rest_. Like her body was still using up energy as it sorted through the problems in her head.

The hours of the afternoon that were left proved frustratingly fruitless again. Their suspects were uncooperative and howling harrassment, and had the ear of some of the most powerful figures in the town. Ray McBreen's room had been cleared out but their suspect nurse, now off-duty, had answered her door to them all sweetness and innocence, though her eyes were hard and hateful.

There'd been a minor crisis with an unknown outbreak of contagious green spots that afternoon, and the hospital staff had been overworked and _distracted_ , to say the least, and had not noticed Ray McBreen leave or be taken. It was Elsie Petson's Trouble, the Chief... _no_ , damn it, _Garland_ had filled in. Dealt with now, and they were passing it off as a joke rigged by her and a bunch of her teenaged friends. 

...Audrey was absolutely not going to get used to the old man being back. _Nathan_ was Chief, and if there were parts about that which Audrey didn't like... _well_. Nathan was alive, and it was his life, his job, his responsibility. They _weren't_ going to stand by for the dead man's revolution.

Still, it felt like there was a certain pressure off as they went home that night: late, which meant that Duke would be pissed, but Garland was still installed happily in his old -- in Nathan's office, playing tunes on a record player he'd dragged out of Nathan's imposed storage and contentedly sitting the night shift. "Ain't like I'm going to waste this time with _sleep_ ," he told them cheerfully as they tromped out the door.

"Hi, honey." Ten minutes later, in the entranceway of the _Gull,_ Duke curled his arm around Audrey and kissed her firmly. He repeated the greeting with Nathan, ducked a retaliatory elbow jab with breathless laughter, and pulled his coat from a hook by the door. He reached for a stack of take-out boxes on the edge of the counter, and passed a couple off the top of the pile to Audrey. "You sent cops to watch me, Nate. Take your public humiliation like a man. Come on, let's go home."

They went, Nathan shaking his head at a few of the patrons and the minor public stir. The patrons were predominantly _grinning_ , Audrey noticed, even if Nathan did not.

Back on the _Cape Rouge_ , they ate in relative quiet. Audrey refused wine and Duke surreptitiously exchanged a conversation with Nathan entirely conducted with just their eyes and then put the wine away altogether. 

"Today has been weirder than usual," he said, as he came back to the table.

Nathan gave a glum nod. "I _wish_ I could raid the Good Shepherd Church. Have people bash down the door of that nurse, and every one of the Rev's old flock. We're just giving them time to make their next move. But we're a small town police force. There are still wider authorities I have to answer to, if I want to keep this job."

"I guess the resurrection of the dead crazed Reverend wouldn't work as an excuse for hauling in some of the town's most _devout_ citizens," Duke said, bitterness dripping from the words. 

"When he makes his move," Audrey grit, "I am going to establish that I killed him once and I can always just kill him again. Assuming... that I _can_ kill him." She frowned. "Because actually..."

"Huh. Does Garland know?" Duke asked, with morbid intrigue. "Whether he can die again like this?"

"Didn't think to ask," Nathan said.

"Didn't think to ask Evi, either. It doesn't slip into the conversation well. But maybe we should avoid killing the dead people. For all we know it does something really weird. We could end up with zombie Driscoll shuffling around _actually_ eating his follower's brains, and I do not need to see that."

"I could stand it," Audrey offered, but reneged quickly. "Okay! Alright, so dissolving Ray's Trouble is first choice. Then we will do _that_."

After the meal, Audrey cuddled up on one of the couches and watched Nathan and Duke going about freakishly domestic chores. Her head ached dully. There was a weird buzz, like voices were cluttering the edges of her consciousness but she couldn't quite make distinct words out. 

She _tried_ to let herself drift off; didn't pick up a book, sat still instead and listened to the clock tick and felt the distant rhythm of the waves under the hull rock her slowly. All she did was stare fixedly into corners. She'd been too active this afternoon, and now the plan to try _talk_ to the other people in her head while they were still there was a complete bust.

It occurred to her that for a while Duke and Nathan had been subtly or not so subtly finding things to do to keep themselves occupied and leave her alone. 

Duke came in, with Nathan -- generally the _un_ subtle one -- hovering at his back. "Do you... want me to try and get the meditation gear out? Try something different?"

"No," said Audrey decisively, getting up. "I want to go to _bed_."

She said it in a manner that made it clear the last thing she was thinking about was sleep.

She let them undress her between them, handing it over to them to do the work. Duke trailed kisses around her shoulders, down over her breasts. Pressed her by gradual stages onto her back on the bed, where he cuddled down at her side and continued the ministrations. Nathan rose between her feet, climbing up from the end of the bed as she stretched out her legs to welcome him. His hands slid from her ankles to her knees, then higher. His hair tickled as he settled his head between her thighs, and she jolted and made a noise at the first delicate lick. 

"Shh," Duke said, leaning back, his arms around her. Nathan's fingers moved soothingly on skin, rubbing. Nathan took positive delight in this, like he was challenged to make her feel as special as she did him, even though that equation was so monumentally weighted. It... well. She tended to think he had to get _pretty_ close. She moaned as he curled his tongue and Duke took her hands.

For the first time that day, her brain finally shut down on the thoughts of the dead, and the Rev, and her _brain..._ and she didn't even think about her headache for a while.

Eventually, she had to stir herself and reach down a hand to ease Nathan away. "Enough," she mumbled, vaguely insensible. "Come up here and join us."

Once he did, she pulled at his clothes and he let her tug off his shirt, though he had to be more proactive about wriggling from his jeans and underwear, struggling to remove them from around the crotch area. What he'd been doing -- that much sensation was easily enough to make him hard on its own. But he just gave a soft moan as he settled at her side, and his erection wetly brushed her thigh, resting there against her skin. He snuggled down, slipping an arm around her, and seemed happy enough like that, pressing her hand away when she made a sleepy move to reach for him. "Leave it."

She wondered what that was like for a man, to be so removed from the proof of his masculinity that it would be a welcome novelty just to _feel_ that state of physical want, on the edge, threads of discomfort and need and everything else.

Nathan was more philosophical about his Trouble these days. He loved to feel, but increasingly it was a non-issue that he couldn't feel Duke, and increasingly, the boys were finding ways around that, or even ways to make use of it, rather than bemoaning its deficiencies.

"Do you think they'll come tonight?" Duke asked, rolling forward to pull the cover up over them: herself, sleepy Nathan -- almost asleep already, in fact -- and last of all huddling in underneath with them himself. "The dreams? The others?"

"I don't know." Audrey shuddered a little, because even if they were just dreams, the ones of Mara were horrible, and they'd hurt. Even more terrifying was the idea that she'd woken up with that stranger within looking out of her eyes and using her as a mouthpiece. But here like this, held between Nathan and Duke, she at least felt as safe as she _physically_ might, in as good a place as she could be to build a defence of her psyche upon. "Looks like I'll have to take that dive down and see."

***


	4. PART 3

**PART 3**

Nathan's phone rang as they were stumbling through the motions of preparing breakfast, Audrey bleary because of disturbed dreams, Nathan through being periodically awoken by his headphones on their cycle, and Duke because when neither of _them_ slept, how the hell was he supposed to sleep?

Nathan grabbed for the phone with that set look on his face like he knew what was coming and lifted it to his ear. After a few curt one-word questions and acknowledgements, he lowered it and looked up at the both of them again. "Laverne says, 'The dead Reverend's preaching about the Rapture in the park.'"

Duke had seen a lot of pissed off faces on Nathan, but this one was _so done_ with everything it was kind of beautiful in its silent thunder.

Audrey was walking into the galley with her hair piled on top of her head in a stack. Nathan looked at her and said, "We need to go."

Duke pulled a frown. "Breakfast on the hoof, then."

He worked on stuffing the sausages and eggs that he'd been cooking between slices of bread, and finished just in time to put one in Nathan's hand and one in Audrey's as they were leaving.

"Any contact last night?" he asked Audrey from the back of Nathan's Bronco.

"I don't know. It's all a bit hazy." She leaned over the back of the passenger seat, her eyes still bleary and also worried. "I don't remember any nightmares about Mara, and they're... memorable. Maybe she's just not talking to me out of spite, now she knows I _want_ to communicate. Or maybe she's gone and I'll never get anything out of her now."

Duke said, "We're okay if she's gone and can't hurt you again."

"Haven will manage," Nathan supported.

Audrey just gave them both that sour face that said, _Why don't you understand_? and took on the whole of responsibility for Troubles and Barn as if they were hers alone to bear and it was actively her fault if she couldn't do it.

In Duke's book, any time before 9AM was too early in the morning for organised religion. They were pulling up to the park now, where the grass slope led up to the bandstand. It was clear there was a disturbance of some kind. People were milling about and a big police truck was parked askew halfway up the slope.

There was a mist in the air off the sea, starting to dissipate from the brightness of the sun, but still hazing the landscape right now. It had the effect of making the whole scene unreal and the world seem unnaturally _white_ and _light_. Further up the slope toward the bandstand, the figures were more like smoky silhouettes. Duke, Nathan and Audrey abandoned Nathan's Bronco next to the police truck, and as they made their own weary pilgrimage up the grass slope to the makeshift podium, Duke could pick out the figure of Reverend Driscoll, hands spread, standing on the structure's raised steps. The brightness of the sky glowed behind him through its open sides.

Duke heard him before he saw him, though that much was almost always a given. 

"... _On the other side we will be met by those of the Faithful who have gone before us, but I have come back from that paradise to save YOU, who remain, and salvage the souls of this damned town..._ "

Garland Wuornos stood apart from the other listeners with his hands stuffed in his pockets and disgust on his face, with Stan and some other cop beside him -- what? Duke _didn't_ know the name of every cop in HPD. He _didn't_. 

On second thought, it might be Jim.

Nathan, tense with frustration and _fear_ , opened with. "Why is he still up there _talking_?"

Garland shuffled but mustered an accusatory glower right back. "You can try arrest him if you feel like that. Didn't work too well when I tried."

"What the--?" Nathan screwed his eyes against the haze, and his face went even stonier. Duke followed his example, searching. There was something about how the people were standing, closer to the Rev. Like they were maintaining a perimeter -- watchful, wary, bulges of weapons beneath their clothes.

"I do not bring condemnation!" Rev had got louder, and Duke saw his eyes travel over the crowd he'd gathered, lapping the attention up, and come to land right on Nathan with the usual tune. "If the cursed repent, then _they too_ may be saved!"

Unfortunately, a bunch of other eyes followed the Rev's, and a murmur lit up among some of the people present. Not even his own core nutters, because the isolated murmurs that Duke caught weren't about Nathan being _Troubled_... Sexual depravity and unholy practices, and blah, blah, _blah_. Some people in town _were_ oblivious to the Troubles, though Duke had no idea how they _managed_ it, but that didn't mean they were oblivious to Nathan's bisexuality, or his relationship with Duke, or his relationship with Audrey. And what conclusion were they supposed to draw about the Rev's meaning, _clearly_ , when he came out with lines like that?

Nathan's face went pink and Garland looked baffled. Audrey said, angrily, "We need to stop this crap _right now_."

"The _Troubled_ ," Nathan said, startling Duke as his voice raised, shaky and gruff but also loud enough to counter the Rev, "don't need to repent for sins that aren't theirs! Reverend, this is an unlicensed public gathering. I need this to disperse, as a matter of public safety!" He waded forward into the crowd. "Come on! Break this up, people! Go home!"

Hands jostled at him, pulling and pushing, but Nathan was good at being an immovable object when he wanted to be.

"He's got better at this," Garland muttered, next to Duke.

Still, Nathan's immovability might not actually be helping him. There was starting to be a different murmur gathering around him, as people realised how thoroughly he ignored their shoves and scratches, like maybe the _unnaturalness_ of that was impacting on them now. And just because a bunch of angry people couldn't do so much to move Nathan didn't mean he could budge them back.

"The will of the people," Driscoll said, "does not always respect public ordinance. When we gather for the End of Days, would not the rules of our old order naturally fall away from us?"

"I'm asking you to take this back to the Good Shepherd Church, Reverend!" Nathan shouted, annoyance animating his form in counter to its usual stiffness.

An excitable, agitated _burr_ rose among the crowd. Duke caught the words 'miracle' and 'resurrection'. _Of course you didn't_ order around miracles based upon mundane points of law... unless you were Nathan Wuornos, and Duke sunk his face into his palm.

"And we will," the Rev responded with a light in his eyes that knew he'd won. "When I have gathered my flock to me."

"...kind of dumbass looks at anything happening in _this town_ and calls it a miracle?" Garland growled under his breath. Duke thought the old man had never made a fairer point. Garland raised his voice to weigh in, too. "You call this a miracle? Then, here! I'm a miracle too! Come on, now, people, this is horseshit. Look at me, take a good look. I've been dead longer than he has, and I sure as hell ain't no holy man. This is no miracle, this is _Haven_. I know for a fact at least half of you got the sense to know what that means."

"'Lost at sea', wasn't it, Wuornos?" one of the Rev's staunch supporters called over. Duke recognised him as one of the ones who'd been charged after that day with Kyle Hopkins. _Fuck_ , they were letting them out already. "Guess they were mistaken about that. Nice try." 

"We saw his _body_ ," said another. "We saw it bleed out."

"You people _know_... that this is a goddamn Trouble!" Duke yelled across at them, so angry the words tried to stick in his throat. He wished he hadn't, for the attention that drew, though the Rev just smirked at him and moved on.

"You need to--" Someone in the crowd gave Nathan a hard enough shove to drop him to one knee. Audrey moved to draw her gun, but Garland was there, yanking her arm down.

"We can't control it. Can't control it any more with _that_. These are still just citizens of this town. He's got folks listening who were never dumb enough to listen before. Hell, now he's standing up there large as life and back from the dead, who can blame them?"

" _Nathan_ \--" Audrey started.

"Hey, now, people, let the Chief up." The Rev's fake benevolence beat Duke to the punch, as he moved forward with Stan at his side. He caught one of Nathan's hands as it reached out of the crush and pulled him out of the sea of legs. Stan got his other arm as he rose. "He is just a man with a job. A man who doesn't yet know the old order is at its end. Those who want to be saved will come to me and the Lord... Those who cling to what's left will be left behind. We should feel compassion for their ignorance."

Nathan shot a dark look over his shoulder but didn't even bother trying to muster a comeback to that. He was taking his own weight again by the time they got back to Garland and Audrey. "We can't do anything here," he said, the words like an explosion. "We can't move these people. They're not going to listen. We need to find Ray, wherever they've got him. Best thing we can do is make this short-lived."

"I hear you," Garland said.

"That nurse made him appear before," Duke said. "She's got him somewhere, her and some other Rev cronies."

"Her name's Mandy Cartwright," Audrey corrected. "Amanda Cartwright."

"We'll go." Garland gripped Nathan's elbow. "Already established there ain't shit either of us can do here." He looked at Audrey. "That solution. It's the last resort. We don't got enough officers to establish crowd control over this many heads, not if we brought in every serving member of HPD. So don't you jump to use it, but..."

Audrey nodded. "Someone needs to stay here and keep an eye on this. Fine. Leave me Stan. I can use HPD's friendliest face, if things get wild." She cast a strained, wry grin at the uniformed officer. 

"Check." Garland curled a finger at Jim and turned his back. Nathan cast a last flat glance over Duke and Audrey, handed the keys of the Bronco to Audrey, and followed his dad.

Duke looked between his two lovers and their current company and made an executive decision to huddle closer to Audrey.

"What are we looking at?" he murmured to her, under his breath, the swell of the Rev's gathering flock fucking _frightening_ to behold. "He's talking about the end of days, right? Is this like some crazy -- tell me we're _not_ looking at the Rev leading Haven's version of some sort of cult mass suicide?"

Audrey shuddered. "I really hope not, but I'm pretty sure that's why Garland just asked me to stay."

***

"You gonna tell me when Driscoll started thinking with his ass?" Garland asked, as he skewed the police truck down the grass back to the road, honking stray bystanders from his route. 

Nathan raised an eyebrow and quirked something of a smile from the passenger seat. "Thought he'd always done that."

"Yeah. Well, you know what I mean. I knew if he ever sobered up long enough he'd be a problem. Who the hell got him on the wagon?"

Nathan sighed. "Think it started when he found out his wife wasn't dead." He gave a run-down of everything that had happened with Driscoll in the spring and early summer. Didn't have to cover the last time the bastard had come back from the dead, at least. Garland had been there for that.

"Turn here," said Jim in the back, who'd been on the radio to Laverne to check Amanda Cartwright's address. 

"Oh, yeah, and what was that crap about unholy sexual practices, Nathan?" Garland asked as he spun the wheel, inducing enough of a spin in the contents of their stomachs that even Nathan got a sense of the nausea, on some level, and Jim made a discomforted noise from the back. "Sure doesn't sound much like you." 

Nathan groaned. There were too many people in town who knew about his personal life for him to keep this quiet. Maybe getting it out there quickly while they were in the middle of something else, so his dad didn't have time to dwell on it, was actually the way to go. "Duke and Audrey," he mumbled, mostly into his knuckles. "They mean Duke and Audrey."

Garland's eyes went wide and Nathan and Jim both yelped as he nearly put the car through someone's fence.

"Jesus Christ!" Jim howled. "Just 'cause you got a reprieve from the Grim Reaper, don't you get all casual about it on our behalf!"

"I _told_ you to leave that woman a-goddamn-lone," Garland growled.

"Yeah?" Nathan shot back shakily, his heart pounding loud enough he could hear it, and that little to do with the near miss. "Well, it was too late. By _weeks_. Months. Too late with both of them."

"Crocker," Garland picked up, just when Nathan was thinking he'd dodged that one. "You've got to be fucking kidding me. You know about his blood--"

"I was there right with you, I saw it! And yeah, that was a problem for a while. But we're good, _it's_ good, and I'm not ending it because the respectable people of Haven don't like it! Not when the same _respectable_ people of Haven are perfectly down with kidnapping and _murder_!" His voice had risen to a shrillness that made him wince.

They were pulling up outside a small, pink and white painted house with a picket fence. There was no car in the drive. Garland was momentarily distracted screwing up his face at the sight of the house before he turned to ask Jim accusingly, "You knew about this?" Jim shrugged and looked hedgy, HPD Chiefs either side of him and his loyalties seriously torn.

"It's not relevant--" Nathan started.

"Like shit it's not relevant! You don't think you were a hard enough sell to this town when everyone who didn't have their head up their ass just knew you were _Troubled_?"

"Oh, _fuck you_ ," Nathan snarled. "If I'm already damned for something I didn't choose, might as well be damned for something I _did_." He slammed the truck door and stalked ahead to the pink-painted porch to hammer on it for entry to the too-cute house.

Inside was silent. They shelved their argument for the five minutes it took to force entry and search the place thoroughly, speaking no words except for curt instruction and information. Garland tossed an address book to Jim as they got back into the truck. "You start calling her relatives, find out if they know where she is."

"That's an invasion of -- we don't have--"

"I don't give a flyin' fuck. Driscoll's fixing to take this town up in flames with the promise of resurrection and eternal life. There were off-duty cops in his goddamn crowd. If it brings down any heat, you can say it was on my instruction."

"Chief!" Jim choked under the roar of the engine as they pulled out again. "You're _dead_."

"Sure. Won't be around for it to be a problem for me."

Jim stuttered and Nathan didn't have enough sympathy or any particular argument to muster to help him out. Especially when Garland moved on with, "So, you go on Nathan. You were telling me how you chose your 'relationship' over your duty to this town."

"My relationship has _saved_ this town," Nathan snapped. "Simple fact. There was a Trouble -- the world was _completely different_. Nobody even knew what Haven was. Even Audrey's memory was-- Only constant we _had_ in that world was that Audrey and Duke and I... were in love. And on some level, we still knew that."

Garland gave a long, disgusted snort.

"I don't even care what you think!" Nathan half yelled, then did a double-take. "Where are we going?"

"Check a couple homes of the ringleaders of that crowd."

"We should check the church." Even as Nathan said it, the certainty came over him. "Wait. Dad... _dad_. It's the Church. It's where Driscoll's going next. Promised me it, _smiling_. He's telling people they'll see their loved ones returned to them. He plans to use _Ray_."

"Don't be ridiculous," Garland scoffed. "He's not keeping the guy he _kidnapped_ in full view in a public church building."

"He needs Ray there," Nathan insisted. "He doesn't know the music works if..." He lowered his voice to a hiss and partially uncovered the MP3 player in his jacket pocket. "Drop me off there if you want to search somewhere else, but I'm telling you that's where he'll be." He reached for his phone to call and warn Audrey. 

"Right, right, _right_..." Garland grumped. "Man, you've got uppity since I left."

Nathan glared, grit his teeth and tried not to clench his hands into fists. "This was what you _wanted_." 

Jim coughed an uneasy interruption from the back. "Cartwright's sister says she's off doing the Lord's work... and told me to go fuck myself."

Garland waggled his head and smirked. "The Lord's benevolence in Haven."

***

"When they move to the church, this is only going to escalate... _Everyone_ in that crowd finds a dead loved one beside them..."

Audrey sighed and shut her eyes, Nathan's voice washing over her. They did _not_ need this. "You need to get Ray out before the Rev tries to move people over there." Even more people had gathered in the park as the news spread. Only _one_ resurrection so far, and even the people who didn't believe were at least _interested_. "I don't think there's any way to control this crowd. I'll let you know if they start moving. And be careful. If he is out in full view, they'll have him well guarded."

She put her phone away. Duke had heard and fixed her with a very concerned look.

"There isn't room for this many people in the Good Shepherd Church," Stan said. She had to wonder what he was making of all this. She'd never had the conversation with him about whether he knew of the Troubles, but he was taking a dead man preaching relatively in his stride, and hadn't questioned the assertion that was a _problem_ and not remotely religiously meaningful.

"Even less room for double the numbers when Ray starts playing, though I doubt the Rev and his people have even thought of that."

"Maybe because even the overtly knowledgeable about the Troubles are a little bit in love with the idea that it's _true_ ," Duke said, shaking his head. "That maybe they _are_ all going to be uplifted. Seriously, at least _some_ of these people know what this town is like. You'd think that in Haven, if anywhere, people would've learned to steer clear of anything weird."

"Well, you're still here," Audrey offered with a smile, mustering it for him with some effort. "Hopefully Nathan and Garland can get Ray out in time, everyone gets bored with the Rev's ranting and goes home." She felt useless, standing on the slope listening to the Rev's burning words while surrounded by so many of his _sheep_. Hellfire, damnation, and the disintegration of the Earth with those let behind, and didn't Driscoll's plan's _always_ figure on someone being ostracized by the Almighty. HPD had no way to control this many people. _She_ didn't. She ought to be with Nathan and Garland... "What the hell?" 

A familiar dark head attached to a _very_ familiar uniform moved past among the milling people and she dived in to grab Tatum's hand and pull him back. "Hey!" she snapped, perhaps more sharply than was really warranted. "You're a cop. Do _not_ tell me you're joining the Rev's zombie brigade?"

"Aw, hi, Audrey," he said, unfazed. "My mom's up there, and my aunt. How crazy is all of this, huh? You think it's really happening?"

"Tater--" Audrey lowered her voice to a hiss. "You _know_ about the Troubles. Your aunt was rescued from a _tree_ again last week by _Nathan_. You _tell_ me you know what this is!"

"Just because there are Troubles doesn't mean there aren't other things too."

"Tater!" she snapped. "Do _not_ tell me you think Driscoll is God's chosen mouthpiece?"

His face screwed up and he looked reassuringly more dubious. "Well, frankly I'd rather have gone with the old Chie-- Hey, I'm not on duty, I just got _off_ duty. I'm allowed to be here! Everyone _else_ is."

"Okay, okay..." She backed off and held up her hands with a weary sigh. "But you _know_ this is working its way up to a situation. You'll help me if things go sideways?"

"You're not gonna make me do anything my mom won't forgive me for?" he ventured dubiously, looking back toward the rapturous Rev.

Some movement was happening over there. She hadn't been listening so much to the words the Rev was saying, but he wasn't talking anymore. Stan jostled her elbow as they were pushed closer together, and then she looked around and realised maybe something was happening back here, too. "Where's Duke?"

They both looked again while the crowd pushed, trying to move them on. The babble of the people had risen. _The church_ , she caught, amid the voices. _It's happening at the church_!

"No," she snapped. "It's too soon. Nathan needs more time." Duke _wasn't_ in sight, and he had too much sense of self-preservation to just wander off in all this. She grabbed Stan's arm hard so they weren't separated in the push of the people around them. "You were watching Duke. Where did he go?"

"I didn't know I was supposed to be watching Crocker!" Stan protested. "What do you think he's done this--?" He let out an _oof_ as a clump of people ploughed into him from the back, and ended up grabbing onto Audrey harder for balance.

" _Disappeared_ , Stan. He's disappeared! And in this company, that makes me _very_ concerned." The crowd were pushing them in a particular direction, and they could break out now or get towed along. Audrey scrambled for her phone, choosing another tactic.

Duke wasn't answering, but if he was somewhere in all this, it might be because he couldn't hear to answer. She could stay here and look for him, or... 

"Stan, I think someone's... someone's taken Duke, or _something's_ happened to him. I need to go with the crowd, to the church. Can you stay here and look for him? Call in back-up if you can, if there's anyone still left to call in."

Stan opened his mouth to respond with what was surely an affirmative, but she already couldn't hear him. She'd let go and the crush of people was towing them apart. She turned and started to push to try and get ahead of the flow. There were too many people here, and she intended to be _in_ the Good Shepherd Church, when the action went down.

She was raising her phone to her ear again, calling Nathan... She thought it was picked up, but she could barely hear herself _think_ with all the noise around her. "Nathan! They're coming!" she yelled, hearing no reply, hoping for the best. "I hope you have this in hand, because they're coming, _now_!"

***

They left Jim with the car to fetch and coordinate back-up if they weren't straight out again, and forced a side door, Garland jerrying an old lock. The faint reverberating sound of the church's organ being played filtered through, although the notes were slurred and clumsy, the tune... eccentric.

"That's him." Garland was a crotchety old curmudgeon but he could admit he was wrong in the face of evidence. He let out a fierce curse and Nathan shot him a warning look, since they _were_ trying to sneak in. Fact was, most of the Rev's crowd were _going_ to recognise him. They probably had flashcards with his face on -- Haven's most Troubled, watch out.

"You can tell? I mean, _other than_ by the fact it's by... is that by Marvin Gaye?" 

"Not up to explainin' it, but take my word."

Nathan wasn't willing to pin any hopes on tired and forced playing having anything less than Ray's full effect. 

Crossing the threshold took them into a narrow corridor. The loose ends of papers on a notice board ruffled as they walked past. Garland had drawn the gun he'd taken to carrying as if he were still a full officer. Nathan felt vaguely disrespectful drawing his weapon in a church, but copied him nonetheless.

The music echoed louder until they reached the small door near the back of the nave that led from the smaller, untidier, practical rooms of the church's more earthly functions into its public worship area. Garland reached out to touch their side of the door, but paused and looked back to Nathan and waited until a nod passed between them. He swung open the door and held there while Nathan went in first, gun levelled, aware of the door swinging closed and Garland's heavy footsteps following after him.

In quick succession he took in Ray and Lily at the organ to the side of the chancel, the red-haired nurse sitting in the front of the pews with her shoulders tight and her hands clasped, and two of the Rev's kind of thugs -- the well-dressed kind with expressions of superiority -- hanging by the steps down onto the crossing between the chancel and the nave. The latter were armed, but they weren't flaunting it. Ray's leg was in plaster, they were in their house of worship, and they were also expecting the company of _far_ too many people.

They were also extremely distracted, one by the presence of an old woman gazing around the church with a vague interest, the other by a young child that clung to his leg. The latter man looked particularly shaken.

"Hands up," Nathan said, vaguely pointing his weapon, staring with some unsettlement at the child and averting his aim further. Ray stopped playing with a _clunk_.

"Thank goodness--" Lily started.

" _Don't_ stop," said Mandy Cartwright, standing up in the pew. "The faithful are on their way. They need to experience this, this _gift_ \--"

"Gifts extorted by threats and kidnapping." Garland nodded sarcastically, approaching the men one at a time to divest them of their weapons. "You people always were good at that sort."

Nathan didn't know if it was only because the organ playing had stopped that he could now hear the rest of the noise gathering. Since they'd approached the church from the back, they hadn't been able to gage how close the crowds were at the front. In his pocket, his phone started to ring. He exchanged a look with Garland and took it out.

Parker... He couldn't work out much of what she was saying, but it wasn't like he didn't know the meat of it. He took it away from his ear while the noise on the other side was still in full flow and snapped it shut to shove it blindly in his jacket again. "We need to get Ray out the back _now_."

He cast a sour look across the little gathering of the Rev's people and crossed to the man on the organ stool, hooking an arm under his shoulder. Garland growled agreement and went to take his other side. Lily gathered up the mouth pipes and a bundle of clothing -- jackets, hospital gown. Ray was dressed mostly in blankets, but had a loose, long shirt on his upper body, and probably looked almost normal from the public end of the church if he was sitting down, almost hidden at the church organ anyway.

The Rev's men were wary of the guns, but Cartwright was up on her feet and moving like she didn't care.

"Get back," Nathan warned sharply.

The threat only made her laugh. Nathan couldn't justify shooting as she closed in at a run. Then she was pulling at Ray. "You can't take him! He was sent to us. Sent to do the Lord's work!"

"I don't do work for any God of _yours_ ," Ray groaned, weak but defiant, trying to shove her off, to get his good leg under him to help them heft him. Even so, Garland had to take his hands off Ray to shove Cartwright away. Lily clutched onto Ray, helping Nathan keep him upright, but Ray was no lightweight and she wasn't strong enough to help move him. They struggled just to stay wavering in place. 

"You get back over there and sit down," Garland ordered. "You think I won't shoot you if you're unarmed and stupid? I reckon better that than the public order nightmare 'bout to come through that door."

Nathan wasn't honestly sure if he was bluffing or not: just because he never _had_ shot an unarmed woman didn't mean he wouldn't, with the stakes so high and no accountability. Nathan cursed and hauled Ray's weight himself. It was true that he couldn't judge heavy loads well, couldn't easily brace himself, couldn't tell what was too much for his body to bear. But they had to get Ray and his Trouble _out_ and away from the oncoming crowd. He could hear Garland swearing and grunting with effort as he tried to fend off the shrill objections of Mandy Cartwright. He was still trying to position himself to hold back the two men with his gun while he kept her at bay, but the men seemed to be increasingly amused in place of daunted by the situation.

A _crack_ sounded as Garland punched Cartwright in the jaw and she gave a little hiccup of shock and -- Nathan risked a look over his shoulder -- stumbled and fell on her ass on the floor.

"Hey, now," one of the men objected.

"You 'hey, now'. I didn't _shoot her_." Garland waved his gun with the distinct emphasis that he still might.

And the doors of the church swung wide.

The Rev came in on the head of the tide, but the people were pouring behind him, around him, starting with a gallery of faces both familiar and decidedly unwanted. They left a respectful or, perhaps, _fearful_ circle of space around the resurrected man.

"Goddamn it, Nathan, _go_!" Garland barked, and Nathan and Lily surged forward, somehow, Ray carried between them. But they didn't make it to the door, caught up before they got there by the men who had entered the church with the Rev. With _so many_ of the public pouring in behind them, more with each passing second, there was no way anyone from either side could risk a shot. Which left it, unfortunately, a matter of numbers.

The Rev looked Nathan's way, black eyes gleaming, chin squaring, and a smile crossing his severe features as he fixed eyes upon each Police Chief in turn. Then, either not hearing or not acknowledging Nathan's outraged shout, he deliberately turned away, back to his flock.

Nathan was fast overwhelmed, Ray and Lily torn from him, the gun twisted from his hand, arms pulled behind him where he lost track of them altogether. The Rev's own faithful -- most of _them_ he knew of old, and there was never much point trying to reason with them. Garland had also been overwhelmed, was being pushed and harried towards him, similarly in the centre of a knot of core followers. The general public coming in the main doors now wouldn't have a clear view of what was going on. Surrounded by the close press of bodies he couldn't feel, Nathan raised his voice, yelling first for Audrey, then just trying to yell a warning to anyone that could hear _not to listen_ to the Rev. His voice was shredded and lost in the volume of the crowd.

Ray and Lily were dragged away from them and back toward the organ at the side of the chancel, out of his sight. Nathan and Garland were pushed out through the small door into the back rooms of the church again. A half dozen of the Rev's hardline followers clustered around them, hands yanking on clothes and under arms. Garland cussed them vigorously as he tried to fight. 

The door slammed shut behind them.

***

Duke got the express route to the Good Shepherd Church, in the back of someone's car with his mouth and eyes covered and his hands tied. After he kicked out at them when they tried to unload him at the other end, he got his ankles tied, too, and got dragged the rest of the way by someone who wasn't too worried which parts of him were dragging on the ground or what else he hit on the way.

_Hey! -- Ow! -- Thought I was your best damn hope?!_ he thought wildly, having only his internal monologue to keep him company through the uncomfortable journey, other than the bruises. He could only voice unintelligible grunts through the gag.

He could hear the sounds of the crowds like they were no more than a hundred yards away, he'd felt the vehicle travelling uphill the last short stretch after turning and slowing, and he was being dragged uphill over grass, now, so he damned well knew where he was going. 

_Inside_ descended, the wind cutting out, the outside chill replaced by the chill of the interior of a large public building with no adequate heating. He heard Nathan yelling, "Duke! What are you doing with him? You let him go--!" before Nathan's furious voice was cut off in a whoop for air like someone had just driven a fist into his gut.

"-- _Nathan!--"_ Duke's attempt to shout came out a roar of wordless noise behind the gag, and he was dragged on, leaving Nathan's wheezing breaths behind him.

"Don't you do it, son!" That was Garland, sounding a long way off, his voice travelling through the press of people and the length of a corridor to get to Duke. "Don't you kill for them!"

"Shut up!" someone else said, followed by a smack and Garland swearing.

"-- _You should have more goddamn respect for the dead--!_ "

Duke was shoved out into a bigger room; could feel the change in the way the sound hit the air, the space around him. Hard floorboards hit his knees as he was shoved forward and down, unable to save himself from bruises with his hands tied. Someone caught him by the shoulders -- and a fucking handful of _hair_ \-- and dragged him across the floorboards until he was caught and stopped and held. The blindfold was pulled off. He discovered himself to be surrounded by knees in the corner next to the big church organ.

"Duke!" Ray was perched on the seat behind the organ, Lily mostly holding him up. 

"Mf!" Duke said. " _Mmf-MF_!" _Don't play!_

Dick Eddington owned the knees directly in front of Duke's nose. Dickless Eddington... just _great_. They hadn't been able to charge the guy last time, but everyone still knew he'd been in on the kidnappings.

"Don't worry," Dick said. "We know you're not going to help us deliver the Lord's justice to Haven. The Reverend says you're our ticket to get back the man who will, though."

Well, that did explain the thought processes behind his abduction. Another man, also vaguely familiar, pulled the gag from Duke's mouth.

"You're so fucking stupid I don't even know how you remember to _breathe_ \--" The slap in the face was probably predictable, but Duke had too much to say to _care_. "You're _not_ going to get Simon Crocker out of me. Do you even know how this Trouble works?"

A grunt but no slap this time. The Rev had started droning in the background, drawing everyone's attention. 

"Do you even care that, _yet again_ , you're making use of another Trouble to fight the fucking Troubles that you swear in the same breath are the devil's work?"

That carried. Hastily, someone behind Duke cut his arms and legs free, so apparently they didn't want that to draw too much attention here. He wavered upright. Lily clung to his arm, supporting him as much as she was Ray for a moment. 

" _Mr_ Crocker." Now he could see above the majority of the heads in the crowd. The Rev was turning to look at him. The chancel was packed out with Rev-groupies, behind Driscoll's preaching back. There wasn't a whole lot of room for them _elsewhere_. The bodies filling the rest of the church, the pews and the aisles and every space in between, Duke had to assume were the more gullible or curious of the rest of Haven's population.

"Duke!" One voice was picked out of the crowd by his ears that would know her anywhere, but Duke didn't want to draw attention to Audrey by acknowledging it.

The Rev was speaking anyway. "It seems you're the chosen again, Mr Crocker. We have chosen _you_ , specifically, to receive the blessings we bring to Haven today."

"You won't get Simon," Duke said, distinctly. "No matter how many times you try. You're wasting your time."

He supposed it wasn't actually wildly unreasonable that the Rev should fail to believe him. 

"I am going to bring you," the Rev said to the hall, "a _miracle_! Bear witness to how the Lord God supports our cause. And _then_ we shall finally start the good work to cleanse this town of the _evil_... the _corruption_..." He turned to cast a grimly faced order back at Ray and Lily. " _Play_."

"No!" Lily said, at the same time as a second female voice from the crowd yelled, "No!"

Duke did know her anywhere. Audrey. Audrey _revealing_ herself to them. Audrey who'd shot the fucking Rev dead in the first place, and a good chunk of the people between her and Duke in this place _knew that_.

She was pushing to the front, a much brighter figure than the seeming dull surround, almost glowing... No, almost _burning_ , as if something flickered wild and hot within her. Duke vision swam oddly, and suddenly he was afraid. There was heat in her face and the lines around her eyes were tight. She looked _pained_. He thought of the headaches; of Mara.

She looked _fragile_ and _alone_ out there. But still she raised her voice to address the Rev, the crowd and Ray. "You can't play in here! There are too many people already! Multiply each person here in this crush by two and think what happens!"

A murmur went up, different in tone than before, although for most of the crowd it was characterised by confusion.

The Rev apparently wasn't so far gone as all that, because he saw the logic and started nodding and pointing to some of his men. Duke caught the words "crowd control" before he turned back to the crowd and announced, "Some of you must witness from outside, but there will, I promise, be a chance for you all. Fling open the door and the windows..."

Audrey was wavering in the centre of the aisle, the same sort of circle of space around her that people had left for the Rev. But Audrey wasn't back from the dead. She was just on fire from within, and Duke could see it now, the way a heavy, unfamiliar _something_ was piercing out through her eyes.

"Officer Parker," the Rev drawled. "Thank you, sincerely. It could have been such a _regrettable_ incident."

Audrey had saved his _ass_ and potentially prevented a loss of life that would have lost everyone from his cause. Duke grit his teeth and hated the man with a passion.

The Rev's people asserted space into the inside of the church, easing out some of the packed numbers, keeping the doors and windows wide but standing guard upon them. They broke the glass in the lower parts of any windows that didn't open, so the sound could carry to the perimeter. There was a buzz of high excitement among the faithful. It was being picked up to some degree by the rest of the folks, though their own burr was still more curiosity and confusion.

The Rev was about to get a _lot_ more followers, and Duke didn't like to think where his madness would lead him next, as he turned back to Ray and with that gleam in his eyes again ordered, " _Play_."

"I told you, I--" A Rev follower stuck a gun in Lily's face and Ray swallowed hard. 

"Ray, don't do it!" Lily hissed.

"Don't do it, man," Duke echoed; got elbowed in the gut by Dickless Eddington just as he'd been starting to get his balance back. "They're not going to shoot her in the middle of a church. In the middle of all _this_."

Dick drew a knife instead, its _flick_ sounding louder than it should among all the furore. He made a move to carve Lily's face. "It's for a greater cause, Crocker."

"I--I don't know what it'll _do_ to her," Ray said, panic in his voice as he struck a chord blindly, a bum note clunking within it. "I don't understand everything about what I'm bringing back!"

Duke blinked at that, and then Ray's fingers found the notes and his music soared. Wasn't traditional church music -- he injected that much rebellion. The soul sounds of Otis Redding filled the church.

"Hey, I thought we had a deal, lover." That was Evi, at Duke's elbow. She drew in a sharp breath as she took in the scene around them. Duke wasn't sure if she took a step closer or got shoved there because of there suddenly being _a whole lot more people around them_. 

"What're you doing with that knife?" There was sharp criticism in the old-woman voice that rapped out and a terrified yelp from Dick.

Other voices were rising. Not panic -- not quite that, _mostly_ not -- but certainly confusion. Despite the dramatic lead-in from Driscoll, no-one had been ready for this. Duke thought back to all the conflicting feelings of seeing Evi again, to Nathan and Garland, and thought... everyone was distracted, but everyone was feeling _different_ things. Complicated things. Maybe this wasn't going to be the situation the Rev had envisaged. It wasn't going to _be_ all faces turned up to worship the miracles of the Lord, because they should have at least a dozen old family arguments breaking out already.

"You--" Duke had forgotten, in the moment, about what else failed to be as-anticipated. The Rev seized Duke's collar, yanking him around. His glare moved past Duke onto Evi and widened, as perhaps he remembered now that he'd seen Evi in the hospital room, before. "Where is he? Where's your father?"

Evi slapped the Rev hard across the face. "You _killed_ me, you bastard. You think _I've_ forgotten that?"

"Hah--!" Duke choked helpless laughter. "Oh, boy. You really expected -- You can use this Trouble all you want, but it _will not help you_ control the Crocker curse. Because there is no way in hell _I_ am ever going to do your dirty work, and I defy you to find a single being on the Earth who loved Simon Crocker alone and above anyone else they'd ever lost, enough to _bring him back_."

"Oh, honey, that's sweet," Evi said.

"Evi -- Evi, _run_ ," Duke urged. "Take Lily."

"I can't leave--" Lily tried to cling to Ray, but Evi pulled her away. The thing was, _everyone_ was distracted. Even the Rev's minions had their lost loved ones hanging over them now, and where the main emotion coming through _wasn't_ criticism or disapproval, they were far more interested in the reunion than any schemes. The Rev, a lone figure amid it all, was looking around in annoyance.

Evi and Lily didn't get far. Duke had lost track of Audrey as Ray's Trouble impacted on the crowd. Now, above the tumultuous voices of people talking to their dead, he now heard Evi's startled cry of, " _Blondie_?!" and alarmed, struggled forward through the crush of people.

Audrey was kneeling at the head of the aisle, but not in prayer -- more like _pain_ , her shoulders arched, her hands clawed and braced on the floor. Her head was down and her body shook. Evi's hand was on her shoulder, but she seemed to have no awareness of it.

"She is feeling the Wrath of God for her sins," the Rev said, next to Duke's ear, half-deafening him with the way he made his voice boom and carry. Duke realised the one spot where space had been available to move toward had been the circle of space around the Rev.

"Fuck you," Duke said, "she's _sick_. She's having some sort of seizure--" Shoving the Rev away to try and get to her was a step too far for the faithful, even as preoccupied as they were, and Dick woke up and, despite the critical presence of the harping old woman, grabbed Duke by the arms again and dragged him back. Another man helped: _he_ had at his shoulder an older man with a nose like a beak and a disturbing demeanour of approval. "Audrey!" Duke yelled, fighting to go to her. What was wrong? _Was_ it the headaches? Or had someone in the crowd struck her? She hadn't many friends here... " _Audrey!_ "

The men hauled him back. The Rev made efforts to reassert himself upon the situation. " _As promised, the faithful will be rewarded! And the sinner will be punished!_ " His jabbing finger zeroed in on Audrey's tortured form.

_Fuck_ , thought Duke wildly. _Nathan, where the_ hell _did they take you? Someone,_ anyone _, do something..._ Now _, before he gets back control of this..._

***

Nathan had been dragged down into the cramped back office full of books, papers and coffee pots and tied to a chair, with Garland back-to-back behind him in another chair. The Reverend's faithful hadn't lingered much longer than it took to secure them there -- even the man meant to remain and guard them had ducked out to see what was going on and hadn't come back. These people weren't an army, held together by any sort of fixed discipline.

"Even when you think you've seen everything, people _always_ find a new level of dumb," Garland snarled, jostling both their bound bodies as he struggled in his chair. "Guess that could be taken as reassuring."

"Once Ray plays, people are going to be even more distracted," Nathan said with difficulty, stretching to get a line of sight on the ropes that secured him, wincing as he heard his joints crunch and tugging his arms anyway, trying to establish from his sense of _movement_ how the limbs that couldn't feel were twisted and held. "They'll be thinking about what they got back, not what they're doing."

Garland grunted, and was briefly, oddly silent. "That's what I am? A distraction?"

"I didn't say--" Leaning forward, if he went the other way, didn't give him a view of his feet. He wondered if he could tip the chair and force the ropes that were tying his ankles off over the ends of each chair leg in turn. If he could, would that help him to free the rest of him? He had a feeling his upper body was tied to Garland as well as the chair.

Garland's snort at his abbreviated protest said everything needed to deliver his opinion without a word of coherent speech.

Frustrated, Nathan said, "You're _helping_ us, because I asked you to. The Barn..."

"Did you ask or did I decide? Because suddenly my memory seems hazy on exactly how that went."

" _Dad_..." He couldn't rock the chair; he thought it was wedged right up against Garland's, too much weight against it to easily move.

"This is your time, not mine. Maybe it wasn't up to me to be sticking my nose in."

" _Dad_..." A flurry of thoughts went through Nathan's head. He could protest that he didn't want the job, never had, and he wanted Garland back -- and he _did_ : the old man was frustrating as hell to live with, and never short of a critical word, but Nathan wanted him back. Just like he _didn't_ want this job, but maybe he needed to keep this job, the best option for everyone's sake -- Duke and Audrey's not the least. He'd kind of got used to it now, anyway, even if he wasn't ready to fight Garland for it.

He _was_ ready to fight Haven for it. Ridiculously tied to a chair, with Garland huffing in the same fix at his back, he realised that he'd all but given up on keeping the role in recent weeks. He'd been treading water waiting for the inevitable fall. Hadn't expected it to be his dead father who took it away from him, but then again, it was Haven, so that was on him for short-sightedness. 

He'd been facing the public's disappointment for his failure to bring the town through the Troubles... not his _fault_ , any more than it was Audrey's fault that she'd been injured... as well as facing the inevitable and rising scandal associated with his private life.

He wasn't being ousted for who he chose to love. He _was_ ready to fight this town for the right to lead it. 

"I'm just saying," he grit, at any rate not prepared to deliver the words that would wound his father, "we need to get out of these ropes."

" _Hunh_." A moment later, Nathan heard the soft sounds of a head being shaken right behind his ear; the movement of hair and fabric and bristle that made the particular _shape_ of that sound. "You're still numb." Garland's voice was low and restrained as he stated the obvious as though it was somehow significant. "Hard enough to untie knots when you can see them."

"Yes, so I can use your help, and no, my Trouble didn't magically disappear when everyone else's failed to." Maybe that was unfair. Garland hadn't meant the dig at his Trouble as criticism or slight, just that his mentioning it recalled every time it _had_ been meant that way.

"Yeah? Well, 'scuse me for wondering if that had changed, since you're boning Crocker... He ain't immune, is he?"

"... _Dad!_ " Nathan exploded.

"I got no problem beyond the 'Crocker' part, son. You find a nice, respectable fellow out there, then who, what and where you stick--"

"Don't finish that," Nathan growled.

"--Whatever. I'd say better him than Parker, 'cept you decided to do both. Damn it, Nathan!"

Nathan jerked his body almost involuntarily, tossing his head back and hearing his heels crack on the floor as he did. The chair rocked at last but he heard another, duller crack and Garland let fly with a wilder curse than usual. "That's how we're playin' now, is it?"

"I didn't mean to--" He wasn't sure if it was the fact of the unintended collision or the dizzying effect of the crack to the head that put him off balance. "You don't approve of my life, or who I choose to share it with. I'm not going to apologise for that. I still plan to be Chief of Police in this town." Silence from Garland. "Things are different now, but that's not my doing. Audrey was hurt. We don't know if that's... It _seems_ like that's why. Either way, she's here for good this time, same as the Troubles. You said she's important. Well, a big part of what's keeping her together in all this is the support she has from me and from Duke."

Garland's snort was softer than usual. _Guilty_ , something told Nathan. "When I found out, I figured... No, was _afraid_ it was something you'd done. You got yourself in too deep."

Nathan drew a breath that shuddered in his lungs. "I did get in too deep. That might not be a bad thing any more. But the Barn was _not me_."

He heard the minor shifting movements as Garland nodded, and kept nodding for a long and weary interval. "Shouldn't have stuck around this long because I didn't trust you. Shouldn't have lied. Then again--" Nathan heard teeth grinding. "Could see it clear as day between you and her. Didn't understand Crocker, didn't even come _close_ to anticipating any sort of a... _three-way_... But Parker I got loud and clear. You could _also_ have explained up front."

"Audrey's injury, too," Nathan admitted with a sigh. "I should have told you. But... I didn't want people _blaming_ her. She's already blaming herself, I just wanted -- the whole subject -- wanted it off the table."

Only it wasn't working, and he couldn't deny it much longer. Audrey being the broken component meant there was no wider solution to the Troubles. Even the one she'd refused to use, refused to even discuss, probably relied upon her original being _intact_ , if the Barn hadn't come. Nobody was going to persuade her to kill anyone when it likely wouldn't even work.

"Her head, huh?" Garland asked stiffly.

"Abernathy reckons the original is dead. Dying."

"Never did know who and what she was. Just she'd turn up when the Troubles were underway, never seemed to recognise anyone who'd been 'round the last time, always claimed to be someone different."

Nathan craned to look over his shoulder, _wishing_ he could see his father's face. "You didn't trust _her_ , either?" he demanded.

"Well... it seemed _suspicious_ ," Garland shot back gruffly. "You tell me it ain't. All this time, she was so close associated with the damn Troubles, it'd be a fool's move to assume she wasn't connected--"

"You said she was important! She does so much for this town!!"

Garland said with a dark edge, "We don't know _why_."

"...I don't _believe_ you."

"You're having sex with two goddamn people," Garland grumped. "The two most important damn people in the story of this town, no less, the ones you should be watching out for. Don't you tell _me_ you don't believe _my_ actions. I can't even credit that. You--" He swallowed the rest of wherever that had been going.

The silence that resulted after _that_ was probably because neither of them could think of anything left to say. Nathan resumed trying to work at the ropes, suspecting he was only making them tighter and damaging his hands.

"You happy?" asked Garland, seeming out of nowhere.

"...What?"

"Simple question. You happy with them? Rented out the house, Vince said. That mean that's where you're living now? With them?"

"With... whichever one of them," Nathan explained reluctantly, caught off-balance by this sudden turn. "They've still got their own places."

"Man's got to have space of his own," Garland critiqued. 

"I've an _office_ ," Nathan grit. He hadn't been spending any time at the house _before_ he gave it up. "And I'm fine. Okay?"

"Okay, okay..." Nathan could see the face his father was pulling in his mind's eye, even if not in reality. "Hey, Nathan, your ears are better'n mine. Can you hear that music from here?"

"No," Nathan said slowly. How long had it been? A lot had happened, hard to keep track of time like this... 

"I ain't having much luck with these ropes. I'm thinking... thinking I can push myself out of here if I try, though, if you get my meaning," Garland said. "Even if it ain't been as long as usual, you know? So long as that fellow's not still tinkering away." The chairs lurched. "You and me, they used the same rope for at least some of it. Might be if I'm not here, you could slip free."

"Dad..." Nathan said warningly. He _couldn't feel_. Even if the ropes did gain more slack, there was no guarantee he'd be able to get out of this. Garland surely had more chance of getting free than he did. 

"...Yeah. Reckon I'm gonna give that a try. You know, don't you, minute you get back in that guy's range, all he has to do is play one note and you got back-up."

" _Dad_ ," Nathan tried, the protest coming out nervous and high. "I don't think--"

He was talking to air.

Since there was no longer anyone, _especially_ not his father, around to hear them, he let loose a string of curses worthy of Garland Wuornos. Having no other option now, he set about the task of extricating himself from the ropes with a will, trying to utilize the slack Garland had left him. 

***

There was a woman hanging in the air in front of her, head sagged, body limp and stretched with all the posture of death, her old fashioned dress flapping. As Audrey continued to stare up at the apparition, she registered dimly that the woman didn't _hang_ from the ceiling of the church. Even if her head and body had all the appearance of being strung on the end of a rope, she was suspended from nothing. Her feet were level with Audrey's face, where she'd been driven to her knees by the sudden spike of agony through her head.

The people around her seemed to have sped up, all gabbling voices she could barely discern. But as she looked at them, seeing in double, _triple_ time, she realised no-one else was paying any attention to the hanging woman.

Only her.

There wasn't a Trouble affecting everyone else. This was _her head_.

Audrey edged forward so she could look up at the slumped face of the hanging woman...

It was her own.

Of course it was.

"No. You're _not_ real," Audrey said. "You can't be here." She wasn't sleeping, she was _awake_. But unless people had gotten _really good_ at ignoring Haven's crap, no-one else could see this. They were looking at her or the Rev.

The head of her corpse jerked up. "Of course I'm not _real_. You took that privilege! Stop looking up my skirt!"

Audrey jolted back as the woman's feet snapped on the floor. A lot of horrible things her alter had done to her in dreams leaped uppermost in her thoughts. What kind of threat did she represent _now_ , in something that wasn't wholly a dream, but couldn't be normal conscious thought-space either?

She was breathing too fast, the sweat gathering on her skin, and could hear her heartbeat pounding, unmistakeable _physical_ reactions. How much of this was only hallucination? Someone in the crowd jostled her arm. She only shook him off but he reacted as though she'd done far worse, and the rest of the crowd reacted like she was _on fire_ , suddenly clearing a wide circle around her. There were more stares upon her now than on the Rev.

"What are you doing?" she demanded of Mara. "Stop it!"

The people around her didn't react to her words. They were blurred, undefined and moving out of sync with her perceptions. They fell away as Mara stepped in close, reached up and sealed her hands around Audrey's throat.

This _could not_ be happening. This was a woman who _only existed inside Audrey's head_.

In her dreams, she'd always been so... restricted, when it came to fighting her. Mara controlled the landscape, the choices, as though there was only so much Audrey could do to raise hand against her original. The others, especially Lucy, had helped, but she didn't think they were _there_ anymore now.

"If I'm to die," Mara said, "I don't see why I should let you carry on using what's _mine_."

For a flickering instant, Audrey was aware of experiencing double-vision. Even as she flailed at her throat, trying to loosen Mara's grip, she was aware that her body was _not_ _doing that_. There were words, bitter and shrill ones that she _was not speaking_ , being shrieked from her tongue, and the people around reacted to them as though she'd said something terrible. A rustle of panic went through the crowd, then someone threw something.

" _What_ is... happening?" she choked, and blinked back into focus on Mara's face so close to hers. 

_Mara_ looked like a ghoul, eyes like pits, their underneaths blackened, her skin paper white and thinly stretched over bone. Her hair hung lank. Her fingers on Audrey's throat seemed like talons. Audrey pushed her own fingers into Mara's wrists and the skin and bone seemed to give beneath her touch, horribly, but Mara's grip didn't loosen and Audrey didn't gain anything.

"Not quite a stoning--" the object at her feet was a hymn book, compact but heavy "--but we'll get there. I'll make them kill you if I can't! I _remember_ witch burnings!"

"Stop it!" Audrey threw her off, somehow, and they both fell on the floor. Something bounced off the back of her neck, hard enough to break through the hallucination and actually hurt. Her hands clutched the floor tiles, dually. She blinked, realising she was seeing both her own hands and Mara's claws _as if_ they were her own hands.

"I'm not you!" She pulled up Duke and Nathan's words, bolstering her _self_. She had been without memory at all for days, but she had still been herself. She _had_ that. Duke and Nathan's presence in her life made a bright path through her memory. Mara rounded on her on all fours and _hissed_ like a cat. 

Mara was _bleeding_ , mystery wounds gouged out of her skin that had not been there before.

Audrey faltered "Wait... _wait_." Had she done that? Her effort to fight back? Her reassertion of her own identity? _But_... "I don't want you dead! I don't want to do things this way! Please _stop_. If we stop fighting, can I help you to _survive_?"

Mara blinked and scowled, taken aback but far from willing to back off. " _You can't_ , and I won't let you live! Bad enough you took my body on loan. You're not keeping it! I'll send us _both_ down to hell first!"

"I need to know the things you know," Audrey said, her eyes swimming and focus difficult. Things were happening in the real world. She was aware of people very close. " _Why_ do I have your body? _Who_ are you?" She _thought_ that she could break out of the hallucination now, if she tried. But this could be the last of Mara. She didn't want to miss the only chance she might get. "And the Troubles! Please, tell me about the Troubles? Duke thinks you had something to do with _causing them_." Her voice collapsed to a whisper, asking the question she did not truly want to hear answered.

"You think?!" Mara seemed all teeth. "Sure, why not? Why shouldn't your men know that they're curling up at night with the one who cursed them? I made the Troubles. I'd make more, if I could! I'm far more than some faded, whining reflection who _fixes_ them!"

Audrey's breath stuck in her throat. The picture fractured again. Someone else was standing over her with a gun drawn, wearing a blue HPD uniform. Mara's skin was sagging and peeling off in shreds, her body fragmenting with everything else. 

"No, no, no!" raged Mara, flinging the pieces at Audrey like the missiles that were still occasionally coming in the real world. "You... _cannot_... be allowed to live. I won't let you!"

She threw a severed foot, hard, almost knocking Audrey down again.

Then she turned, sitting back with the pieces that were left of her and laughing. "It doesn't matter! You're a _shell_ , a nothing! You couldn't live without me! There's not enough _there_!"

The declaration caused a violent chill to steal over her, but Audrey said forcefully, "I had _no memory_ in Malcove's world. Not yours. Not Audrey Parker's. That means I don't need _either of you_ to be whoever I've become."

Bolstering herself was the death knell for Mara. Audrey watched her collapse into disparate threads that shrivelled and waned and disappeared, off into the cracks in the floor, into the crowd between people's feet, and _some_ of them, coiling up into Audrey herself.

***

"What's wrong with her?" Ray asked, his eyes wild and wide with pain and shock and honestly Duke figured probably any number of things in the middle of this crap. The guy had a broken leg, and who knew if the Rev's people had bothered to keep up his pain meds? He'd just lost his _wife_ , even if she was still there, standing beside him.

This was all going to hell _so fast_. Audrey was losing it, and since they'd _hidden it_ from the town at large, these people didn't know she was sick.

Evi picked up another thrown object and this time threw it back, bouncing it off the head of _hopefully_ the person who'd thrown it. "Fuck you! This is not the 17th Century!"

Duke wanted to go to her, but Tater was there, melting out of the confusion, putting his body between the two women and the crowd and trying to pacify the masses, even if he didn't know what was going on. Duke had serious doubts as to whether pouring a Crocker onto the situation would have any better effect than using oil to try and douse a fire. 

"The devil has her!" the Rev announced. "You have already witnessed today what the almighty can do for those who have faith! Now witness how the faithless suffer from the presence of the devil inside them!"

That just made that _thing_ wearing Audrey laugh and laugh. She pushed up, shoving Tatum and Evi aside, and yelled, "Wrong! You stupid little town, I am not the devil, I am your _creator_! I am your _GOD_!"

...Well, _that_ was oil on the flames, for sure.

The screams and rage of the crowds blended into an amorphous buzz of resentment. 'Audrey' went for Tatum, hands clawing for his gun. Duke wasn't sure what she was trying to achieve with that but he was pretty glad Evi managed to restrain her, pinning her arms from behind.

'Audrey' laughed and sneered insults at the crowd like she was actually trying to make them rush in and tear her limb from limb.

The Rev's people were a bunch of ...revved-up nutters, but even they weren't that sort of frenzied mad, not yet. Duke didn't even think it was more than half a dozen people who'd been throwing stuff.

"She's _sick_!" Evi yelled. "Don't you people have eyes?"

"'God' spat on this town!" 'Audrey' shrieked. "You know what 'God' gave you to salve your miseries? She gave you _me_! I made you... I made _all_... all the little Troubles..." Her pointing hand hovered on the air. She looked drunk. Duke's heart was beating wildly at those words on her lips. He'd said it -- guessed it -- but he didn't think he'd been completely convinced, until now.

That other, ancient presence, the original template that lurked inside Audrey's head? _Was the being who had made the Troubles in the first place_. What did that make Audrey? Penance, punishment, jailer?

"She has a _head injury_!" Duke yelled, raising his voice loud as he could to be heard over the crowd, and if he could drown out whatever 'Audrey' was ranting, so much the better. He'd muddy the situation by liberal use of the truth. "She's hallucinating! Ask her neurologist in Bangor!"

"Duke, Duke, _Duke_ ," 'Audrey' said, licking her fingers. There was blood on them from somewhere. "So full of _crap_."

Then she... collapsed, thank _fuck_ , and Evi caught her. She struggled up a moment later, holding her head, looking like Audrey, sort of, but looking afraid in a way he'd seldom seen Audrey look, as she gazed around at all the people staring at her in their horror and rage.

"Audrey!" Duke yelled. Her body language had changed completely. It _was_ her again, of that he had no doubt. But the other had left her in a situation that needed dealing with. She raised her head and looked at him, and her eyes misted with affection and her expression collapsed into cautious relief, but she didn't leap to action. Perhaps, in the circumstances, a leap to action was asking too much.

"You heard her!" Reverend Driscoll yelled, melodramatic old buzzard. "Only evil itself would make such claims. She is condemned by her own tongue--" Like hell the old goat didn't hold it against her that she'd pulled the trigger, Duke thought grimly. Audrey's enemies were circling for the kill, and the Rev would do it if he could, if the enemy inside her head had failed. Even if he hadn't understood what had just happened, Driscoll could see as clear as Duke could that she was back to herself now.

In the distraction, Duke forced his aching limbs to move, shoved the intervening bodies out of the way and made it to the front and centre once more. "He is a _liar_!" he yelled, pointing at the Rev. "He was a drunk and a bigot, and the police shot him because he was about to _cut the throat of a young girl_ \-- who, by the way, he _also_ tried to declare was evil! So for the love of _everything you believe in_ , do _not_ listen to him!"

"From the mouths of criminals..." the Rev sneered.

A hymn book bounced off Duke's chin.

"You people, _please_!" Tater yelled, stuttering in the public forum, surrounded by what looked like a cluster of disapproving family both dead and alive. "Duke's a good guy. He helps us out all the time."

Duke's brain blanked a bit at that, which didn't really _help_. And really, Tater pitching in was _great_ , but this needed a voice of authority, someone to match the Rev. Needed _Garland_ , or... or Nathan.

Duke shook himself, feeling like a traitor for thinking of the senior Wuornos first.

Still, the facts remained. These people weren't stupid, nor unthinking, weren't a mob yet. So they'd had a bunch of dead loved ones returned to them? They lived in _Haven_. At least a decent percentage should have _some_ inkling not to take miracles at face value. Even the ones that didn't should have absorbed something by osmosis after all the crap they'd been through, the re-written realities and time re-sets and Halloween freakshow evenings, even if they'd forgotten the events themselves. Should know not to hail Reverend Driscoll as a holy agent bringing wonders down to the Earth.

"I need you people to calm down..." Tatum was trying, both his palms extended. Evi had planted herself as a wall on the other side of Audrey, but her eyes were afraid. Mass religion and a police presence, Duke guessed: those did tend to be the things that had always fazed her most. 

Audrey was pulling it together. She struggled to rise and hold her own weight. The crowd moved like water, reacting to her movements. They backed off with a collective gasp as she lurched on her feet and staggered one way... 

"Audrey! Are you okay?!" Duke yelled, before the Rev could speak again. 

"I think--"

The Rev _started_ to speak and Duke drove an elbow into his stomach. He tried to do it surreptitiously, but he should've just gone for maximum force because it got him dragged off and laid into by the nearest three Rev supporters, and then by another few who were so outraged they waded in specially to add their displeasure.

"Let him go!" Audrey ordered, and used her dubious influence over the crowd to try and get near. She was still very unsteady -- Duke caught glimpses of her, reeling, but when she met up with the core supporters toward the front of the church they stood firm. _They_ knew who'd fired that fatal bullet, while the more general public at the back were only riled and edgy and afraid. She'd certainly been _acting_ possessed. The blows that were still landing faded out in his focus on her as the world swam surreally. "Listen to me, please! You know who I am! Marion, Chet, Diane, Landon... I can see you all there! I'm sorry if I scared you, but _you know me_! I _fix_ Troubles, and _this_... is a Trouble. Don't let this man masquerade as a miracle. He'll tell you the Troubles are evil... but he never hesitates to use them when they help _him_!"

"We know who you are!" one of the faithful snapped, accusing, covering for the wheezing Rev. "Now we know what you are and what you _did_! Condemned from your own mouth!"

The Rev's supporters picked it up and started to work with it, a murmur at first rising almost like a chant. Duke held his torso and wondered if he'd cracked ribs, but at least with the new distraction people had stopped _hitting him_. He struggled to stay upright as their hands abandoned him. "She is _Audrey Parker_!" he yelled hoarsely. "She helps the Troubled!" He gave in to his unsteadiness, lurching against the two men between himself and the Rev, and managed to knock one of them down without even trying. The other clung to his shoulder. He lurched another step anyway, dragging the guy, yelling at the Reverend as he was starting to straighten up and open his poison lips again. "What the _hell_ did you do with Nathan?!"

The Rev frowned at him.

The doors of the church burst open and Duke jerked his head up for the new arrivals in crazy hope.

... _Guns_ were the first thing he saw. Rough leather jackets and scuffed, heavy duty outdoor wear. Also the _guns_ , like a truckload of them. Also the prominently displayed tattoos.

Vince Teagues was at the head of the group, in the centre of the aisle, visible above the press of the crowd, taller than almost anyone else in the church. 

"... _Fuck_ ," Duke said.

Okay, there were probably a few different ways this could go. But on balance, he was pretty sure things had just got _worse_.

***

"Vince!" Audrey was not sure if what propelled her exclamation was relief or horror. There was, oddly, a new sense of warmth and familiarity in her for the looming old man. _Sarah_ , she thought... _Sarah... Lucy?_ She had known him through three lifetimes, and _he would defend her_. 

...Maybe a few pieces of her past selves had made it through to her after all.

_Maybe_ his defending her wasn't the best thing to throw at this situation right now. Two opposing sides in a confined space, geared up for war...

"Are these people giving you trouble?" Vince asked, with steel in his eyes and danger in his voice.

"No... _no_ , Vince," Audrey said, not as sharp as she'd like, _much_ closer to begging than she liked, and her voice sounded weak to her own ears. She felt like she'd fought a great battle already. "We're not doing it like this. Not with the guns."

"From where I'm sitting," Vince muttered, "I see one murderous old drunk who should have stayed in the ground. Seems to me a fine idea to put him back there."

At Vince's side, Jordan McKee let out a sharp laugh and levelled her gun at the Rev. "Volunteering."

" _No_!" Audrey said again, at the same time as Duke's voice rose, aghast: "Jesus _Christ_ , Vince -- Jordan! -- do _not_ shoot him! You don't give him that kind of martyrdom." 

It had been bad enough when the Rev was shot by the police in the line of duty as a consequence of threatening the life of a child. They did _not_ need his followers ignited by his vastly more public death, gunned down without such ignominity and, on the face of it, debatable provocation by a known, _Troubled_ member of the Guard.

They were trying to _avoid_ all-out war in Haven.

"You don't bring those weapons into the house of God," the Rev said, and that was pretty rich considering his well-armed (if more subtly-armed) followers, but he was smiling. "Behold, those among you who are truly Godly. The Lord has seen fit to bring them to our door, that they should be unmasked to you. Behold the army of the Cursed. Behold their _leaders_..."

"So help me, I _will_ kill you again," Jordan said.

"Repent your sins and pray, and you may yet be salvaged."

" _Fuck you_ \--" The only reason Jordan didn't shoot was because Vince reached down and put his hand on the gun. Audrey was unutterably relieved that Vince had enough sense.

"We will fix this Trouble and he will be _gone_ ," Audrey said, her teeth grit, but her words sounded a thready gasp in the large, packed space.

"That woman," the Rev said, "is the _cause_ of all our woes." His eyes were dark and hateful. "For all I know, her death might even be what ends them. Instead of a token sacrifice each generation, _one_ sacrifice, _permanent_ , _now_."

"Sir, I call that incitement to murder in front of multiple witnesses," Tater said, "and I'm placing you under arrest." 

It was a gallant effort and in some world it might've worked. In this one, the only thing that happened was his arrayed family exploded in noisy, scandalised criticism and the Rev's people moved to pack themselves so densely Tatum couldn't get near him.

"I won't let you kill her," Vince growled, his presence suddenly all the more huge inside the church.

"But is he _right_?" Jordan demanded, her voice harsh and needy and -- _far more_ encompassing the sentiments of the rest of the Guard behind her than Vince's stance, as their voices rose in echo.

"If you _kill her_ ," Duke rasped, "you won't have anyone who can _fight_ the Troubles." He almost got the last word out before the Rev's people dragged him down again. Audrey looked his way with concern, but she couldn't do anything. They wouldn't dare harm him seriously, she told herself bitterly. His _bloodline_ was far too valuable to them. 

"What if we no longer _have_ Troubles?" Jordan cried, and there was something so plaintive about it, for a cry to solicit murder.

Audrey was left stunned and uncertain by the murderous turn of the conversation. "I don't -- I don't think that my death will help you," she said, feeling as though somehow she was speaking out of turn. After what she'd just found out... how could she plead for her life? If she'd really done those things, did she deserve to live...? What if it _worked_? Yet... the Barn _had not come_. No. _No_. She clung fiercely to the denial. "It will just leave you with no front line of defence. I'm the only one _immune_..."

"And _no-one_ ," Nathan's voice rang out, harder and louder than she'd ever heard it, "is killing _anyone_ in my town."

***

Well, this was daunting.

He'd made himself wait outside the door for long enough to get a sense of what was happening, with the Rev's people and the Guard and their very _alarming_ topic of conversation; still, when he'd burst in, Nathan hadn't expected to see his lovers in quite such straits. Duke was in the rough grasp of several of the Reverend's supporters. Audrey was surrounded by a crowd of regular Haven folk that was nonetheless giving off the most _ominous_ vibe.

He wasn't armed, and it wouldn't have done him any good if he was. The only threat he had that might work was his badge, and he held it out like a talisman. It had been his father's before him.

He opened his mouth after the first bold declaration and no words came. He could see Ray at the organ, but his hands weren't on the keys. Nathan wondered how long it had been since he'd last played; if it was better not to extend the remaining time they had the Rev to deal with or to have Garland back... " _All he has to do is play one note and you've got back-up_."

He'd never been any good at public speaking.

His vision filled up with the sea of faces turned his way. Vince and the Reverend had far more natural authority about them, but even Jordan McKee had more charisma to work a crowd. She was staring at him with the rest, and hers were the lips starting to move first. 

_Hers_ had been the voice calling for Audrey's death.

"No-one's killing anyone," Nathan said again, trying to pitch his voice to the back of the room, the way that the self-help recordings that Duke and Audrey would never, ever know about advised. " _I'm_ the Chief of Police in this town. Bad enough we've spent the last few centuries condoning the sacrifice of her identity to put a band-aid on the Troubles. Now that doesn't work anymore, we're starting a new era, and we're not going to do it with bloodshed."

" _Nathan Wuornos_ ," the Rev intoned in his booming, disapproving voice, but there was a note in there, too, of almost amusement.

"You have _lost_ your right to speak for the living," Nathan snapped, urgency producing _something_ from his lips to counter the inevitable bite of the Rev's poison tongue. "People, your dead are here. They're here for an hour, two hours at most. I want you to disperse and make the most of that. Say your goodbyes, talk over your unfinished business, and make peace. I want this church cleared in an orderly fashion, starting from the back. Vince--" He took a step, and gestured to Vince with his hand.

The old man gave a gulp, curly head angling, and caught Nathan's eye. Nathan's eye was pretty much _begging_ him for his support but hopefully not being too obvious about it for the rest of the people present.

After a tense moment, Vince nodded and herded his people forward, clearing the doorway and moving on up the aisle. Nathan wasn't charmed by the Guard guns, but he'd rather have _someone_ here with the physical means to go up against the hardcore Rev supporters if it came to talk about burning the curses out of the Troubled again, _or_ murdering Audrey.

"Tatum," he said, swallowing hard. "Help keep them orderly, heading out. Tell anyone still outside that this gathering is dispersing and they should disperse too. There should be other officers out there to help."

Tatum nodded and acknowledged, "Chief!"

It was the _weirdest_ feeling. Nathan had never had this. He _knew_ he didn't have this. Command. _Charisma_. Garland... _Garland_ had had it, but not _this much_. Not like -- like he had these people under the spell of his word, the spell of the badge still thrust forward in his hand. But now it was almost like he could feel a _presence_ within him, heavy but benign, strong and intent.

Garland had promised, when he'd disappeared, that he'd have Nathan's back.

They'd been thinking about the use of _Ray's Trouble_ for that, but--

Unbelievably, people were leaving. The regular folks; not the Guard, not the Rev's faithful, but people _were_ leaving. Hand in hand with their dead... or a hand over their shoulder... or half locked in embrace as they stumbled. _Leaving_ like it was natural to follow Nathan's word when he gave such orders.

Audrey and Duke were gawping like fish, and okay, Nathan was the first to admit that this epic command of people was _not_ a skill he had, but even so, that was irksome of them. The Rev was staring, too, looking pretty put out, and Nathan wasn't sure how he'd held his tongue through that. Vince was squinting at Nathan with a weird intensity.

Nathan was terrified that it was going to end any moment; the effect some kind of illusion that would crash and burn. Yet it held as the public cleared the church, until he was left with was the Rev and the core of his faithful, the Guard, Evi, Lily and Ray McBreen, and Duke and Audrey.

Duke opened his mouth, but then stopped and held himself as though he _did not dare_ say anything.

Nathan said, with a forceful layer of threat to the men holding Duke, "Let him go."

"You don't command _my_ people, Garland," the Rev spat.

The bottom dropped out of Nathan's stomach -- freefall, vertigo, it could _only_ be a psychosomatic sensation. He drew in a harsh breath. The right words -- he needed the _right_ words -- "It's not just him, Driscoll."

The Rev's mouth dropped open, and Nathan realised then that the other man had actually _misspoken_ ; called him _Garland_ in error, and now was checking himself and everything that the mistake and Nathan's response brought with it. 

Nathan eyed the Rev's men and said tightly, " _He_ doesn't have to live in this town. You do. At least two of you already got records in the last incident. You _really_ want to do serious time?"

The men unhanded Duke and stepped back.

Driscoll snorted. "This is ridiculous. This young _upstart_ is no sort of Chief of anything, and he's one of _Them_ besides--"

" _Can it_ ," Nathan said, and this time he could all but hear the other voice layered over his own. Chills ran across the surface of his unfeeling skin.

"We are _taking_ Ray McBreen back to the hospital," Nathan said. "Vince, could a few of your people... he has a broken leg."

"It's his Trouble that started all this," Audrey put in, her voice hushed as if she thought talking might disperse the spell, too. "He's one of you."

Vince nodded. "We'll get this, Nathan." He gestured sharply. He was maybe the only one here who wasn't looking puzzled by this, now. But as his men were lifting Ray out of the church, Lily following them with her head constantly turning back, Vince leaned into Nathan and said, "Does this mean... Garland's not coming back?"

Nathan shook his head -- _not now!_ \-- but realised it had been taken as an answer to the question as Vince nodded, and said, "Goodbye, old friend," and clutched Nathan's shoulder, just for a moment.

Vince stood back, shook himself, and looked around, traces of the bumbling old man filtering back in. "So, what are, um, just what exactly _are_ we doing here?"

"We have--" Nathan started, then turned to Duke and Audrey. "How long since he played?"

Audrey looked mystified, but Duke said, "About forty, fifty minutes."

"For just over an hour," Nathan said, "we're all going to sit here and watch each other, until _this_ old vulture disappears for good." Nathan couldn't feel headaches, but a twitch at the edge of his eyes and an odd floating quality to his attempts to focus his vision suggested his head was _pounding_.

Garland's presence had left him with Vince's gesture, and he held himself tightly on-edge, trying not to lose that thread of command and persuasion that had already been spun out around the folks inside the church... for what was one of the most tense hours of his whole damn _life_.


	5. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

Duke was watching Audrey as they finally trudged down from the church. Her expression was not quite focused, and Duke was waiting warily for a repeat of anything like what had happened in the church, but when she sighed, the relief in her voice was _normal_ , and much the same as that which was rippling through Duke at finally leaving that place. _Her_ attention was on the member of their trio who, admittedly, might as well have grown an extra head as performed the feat they'd both just witnessed. Then again, Troubles being what they were, Duke shouldn't tempt fate: a two-headed Nathan could bitch at him twice as much. 

Nathan himself grunted and gestured vaguely with the set of keys on a blue and silver HPD keychain in his hand, and they filed down and climbed into the police truck Garland had been driving. 

"Oh my God," Audrey said, as she flopped into the front passenger seat. "What the -- _how_ , and -- and _what_ did you do in there, Nathan? Are you sure you're even _Nathan_?"

"Nate--" Duke saw it coming. He was out of the truck again and opening the driver's door as Nathan's hands started to shake violently on the wheel.

He'd been going to suggest a swap, but Nathan leaned out of the door and looked for a moment like he was either going to pass out or throw up. Duke held his shoulder while Audrey sank her teeth into her lower lip and looked worriedly over from the passenger seat. A moment later, when the worst seemed to have cleared, Duke fixed Nathan with his eye and jerked his head toward the back seat. Nathan nodded and eased out of the truck to climb in again and collapse in the back. Audrey scrambled over from the front to join him, curling her head against his shoulder and her arm around his middle.

"Was it Garland?" Duke asked, as he took his place behind the wheel of the _police truck_ and then stopped and did a double-take, and... let it go; the _least_ of his worries, in the circumstances.

"Pretty sure. D'you think that's what they call being _possessed_?" Nathan scrubbed a still-juddering hand over his face.

"I don't know," Duke said. "But Garland couldn't do anything like what you just did in there when he was alive."

"Evi... took control of my body, back after the ghost Trouble." Duke grimaced and sighed, trying to push unhelpful thoughts away. _Later_ , maybe, he could find time and space for those. Right now, Evi was gone with the rest of them. Gone again. "This was different. He didn't take over, he was just _there_. Like lending me -- Like a combined -- I'm okay." Nathan shook his head, dismissing it, and made an obvious effort to rearrange himself into a less awkward pile of limbs than the mess he'd fallen into when he threw himself in the back, juggling Audrey's form half on top of him. "Audrey. Are _you_ okay?"

She fallen quiet, and she didn't jump to answer that question.

"What the fuck happened in the church, Audrey?" Duke asked instead, hooking his elbow over the backrest and turning all the way around in his seat, setting off a dozen grumbles where the worst of the Rev's followers' punches had landed.

"Mara." Audrey swallowed. "Mara's gone. Last-ditch attempt to make sure I went with her. I guess it sucks when the ghost in your head tries to kill you. I feel sort of... not quite like me anymore."

"Could just be the physical effects running their course like Abernathy said," Nathan reasoned. "If you got some flashes--"

"You didn't see her." Duke shook his head and was suddenly very glad that Nathan _hadn't_ seen her... Among other things, Duke didn't think Nathan would have been able to pull off that rescue if he'd been busy having a freakout about Audrey's health. "But if Mara's really gone, she isn't a threat any more."

"Maybe not." Audrey clung tighter to Nathan, to the point that if her white-knuckled grip hadn't been through clothing, he might have actually been forced to object. Her lips drew back, showing too much of her teeth. "But what am I supposed to do with what she _said_?"

What Mara had _said_ had been a bunch of stuff, and Duke couldn't be absolutely certain what specific part of it Audrey meant, if she'd even been witness to the same dialogue the rest of them had, from her perspective on the _inside_ , but -- "You're _not_ her. So it doesn't matter what she did. You're the one who can fix it, who _wants_ to fix it, and is a one hundred and ten percent better deal for Haven."

"We'll figure out the details later," Nathan said, curling an arm around her in return and nodding. He kicked the back of Duke's seat tiredly. "Hit the gas and get us out of here, Officer Crocker."

***

If a significant proportion of the regular folks in Haven hadn't known about the Troubles before, a lot of them had been given a pretty large hint today. Nathan spent most of the rest of the day chasing around with his phone glued to his ear. Vince and the Guard were keeping watch over the situation concerning the still-excitable Rev followers, but that assistance was its own source of anxiety. Nathan would have preferred to use HPD, but the Guard had considerably less crossover from Driscoll's church within their ranks. It wouldn't take much to ratchet up the tension between the two groups right now, but what they absolutely _couldn't_ afford was to have the Rev sprung loose again. 

At least Duke got to go with Audrey back to the hospital, to Lucassi this time, to have her head scanned again and determine for sure if what had happened in the church had been a signifier of further damage.

Abernathy called not long after, to tell Nathan he'd received the scans from Lucassi and been urged by Audrey to pass along everything that was going on. He warned them that he'd need to run the scans past his fellow consultant before he responded with anything definitive, and rang off briskly, but Nathan took heart from his customary ebullience. 

The day slid inexorably toward evening and nothing else exploded; not the repercussions of the one Trouble, nor further mischief caused by any other Trouble. It began to look like he'd actually get to go home.

Then Jonas showed up in his office, looking shifty and unsettled, and Nathan had to have _that_ conversation, instead. 

By the time he escaped from Jonas and rang Audrey to ask her if she was still at the hospital, he really wasn't expecting the answer to be 'yes'.

"We've about finished now, though," she said. "Coming to pick us up and take us _all_ home would be really appreciated at this point."

They were waiting for him in the parking lot, meandering over the same few feet of tarmac together, not quite pacing, not quite slow-dance, though their hands were on each other and they seemed to be talking closely as they swayed over the same few feet of ground. Nathan pipped the horn as he approached and they both stopped and looked up.

"Feeling better now?" Audrey asked as she opened the front passenger door and climbed in.

"You stole my question," Nathan complained. 

"I'll take that as a 'yes'."

"And you?" He eyed her.

"Having dead people in your head is pretty exhausting," she said. "But persuading Ray to let go of Lily was probably a lot worse."

Nathan blinked. "You managed to cure his Trouble?"

"I can't say I enjoyed it." Her mouth shaped a morose smile that didn't reach her eyes.

Duke hadn't yet got into the Bronco. Leaning in the space of the open back door, he cleared his throat behind Nathan's ear. "Speaking of which... It _might_ not work now, but you recorded it when Ray's Trouble _did_ work, so.... Have you still got that MP3 player, Nathan?" There was an edge in his voice.

"Yeah," Nathan answered reluctantly.

Duke reached his hand around through the open back door and waggled his fingers next to Nathan's face. " _Give_."

" _Duke_..." Nathan protested.

"We are _fortunate_ ," Duke said, "that the Rev and his people didn't get hold of that thing, when they had _you_ in their hands -- or click to the idea themselves. Given we _know_ what Driscoll will do with his influence if he comes back from beyond the grave, it's way too big a risk to keep it lying around. You _weren't_ going to use it to call Garland back again, anyway?" Duke prompted.

"No. No, I _wasn't_ ," Nathan growled, and took it from his jacket to hand over with a pained _huff_.

He opened his mouth but didn't quite manage to get his yell out before Duke threw the little electronic device on the ground and stomped on it.

"Dammit, Duke, I thought you were going to erase the _file_! Are you going to trash my _computer_ , too, and the digital recorder that still has the raw recording on it?!"

Duke shifted his feet and looked, maybe, a fraction sheepish. "Okay, but we need to delete _everything_ as soon as we get back." He squinted down at the pieces of Nathan's MP3 player. "Man, it was too weird seeing you with one of those things plugged into your ears, anyway. You _know_ that next it'd be the skateboard and the sweatbands and Audrey and I would just have to stage an intervention..."

***

Collapsed on the bed back home above the _Gull_ , Audrey and Nathan fielded the idea that as the only one of them who had not spent any part of the day being possessed, Duke should be nominated to cook food. Duke countered that not only did he _normally_ cook the food -- Nathan could just about fry bacon and eggs as well as make pancakes (which was fine as long as all they wanted was breakfast) and they hadn't yet recovered from the last time Audrey had cooked -- but _he_ was the only one who had been physically beat up that day, thank you very much. 

After they'd given due commiseration on his bruises, Duke instead phoned down to the restaurant for a kitchen minion to bring up the day's specials in take-out boxes, exchanging the first debate for the question of who got to go to the door and fetch the food.

Much wrangling later, Nathan was deemed the most physically healthy of them and kicked out of bed to put on pants. 

Afterward, they lay tangled in post-food glow, vaguely wondering whether anyone had the energy to go for a post-coital glow or if they'd just stay as they were, languidly gazing at and touching one another, Audrey half lying on Nathan's chest, Duke pressed up behind her hugging one arm across her hips and Nathan's knees. Audrey trailed her fingers over Nathan's sternum, and up his neck to his lips. She felt Duke's lips press against her back.

Duke whuffed a laugh suddenly. "The really scarring thing is, I think I'm going to be having erotic thoughts about Nathan dominating both of us with that _commanding_ attitude he displayed to all those people in the church today, and at least half of that was definitely Garland."

"Shut up," Nathan groaned.

"Only if you use your _special voice_ , Nate."

Audrey giggled despite herself. The inside of her head felt deathly quiet in a way she couldn't quite define, so she was glad that the company outside it could still manage to be so voluble.

"It's actually deeply traumatising," Duke criticized her levity.

"I suppose," Nathan said, more considered, "that all most of those people will remember is that I stood up and told them to disperse on my authority as Chief of Police, and they _went_."

"Mm." Audrey murmured. "So no more talk about ditching that job, 'kay?"

"No." There was an extra gravity in Nathan's voice as he agreed. "Vince knows the truth."

"Vince will support you anyway. Probably," she added after a moment's reflection.

There was a stretch of silence while they all contemplated wherever their heads were at now. Audrey conceded hers might be in about sixteen different places for a while. 

"You do know," Nathan said again, "that you're _not her_. And whatever she did, and whatever she was; whatever the Troubles were, however they started, that's in the past now. We can only move forward. Try our best to improve the present."

"I know that," she said, a little sharply. But it felt very, _very_ lonely inside her head, and that was something she couldn't share even with Nathan and Duke.

Because this had happened to her -- well, the Troubles would continue, and that _wasn't_ good. But _because_ this had happened, she got to stay with them. She got to have a _life_ , with Nathan and Duke. 

If things had gone differently...

She thought about stepping into that Barn. An action and decision not itself _un_ complicated -- it could never be that -- but... leaving Haven a hero. Never knowing about _any_ of this. Farewell until the next time, twenty seven years until the rinse-repeat, and onward to... whatever came in-between.

She felt trace of a nostalgic pang.

But it was only illusion. Now, she knew it _always_ was. She wasn't the hero of this story. Or, if she was, then she was the villain _as well_.

Nathan was right. The only way to deal with this was to look ahead and keep moving.

"I know," she repeated to herself, softer.

She curled her arms around both of her lovers, and for the first time in weeks, Audrey Parker drifted into a dreamless sleep.

END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE: I actually used the image prompts from Spook_me, this time around, so here are the original images: [Hanging woman](http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/roseveare/716494/887233/887233_900.jpg), [Playing for ghosts](http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/roseveare/716494/886936/886936_900.jpg).


End file.
